(*) “Read this carefully, and tell me if there are any
     mistakes in it.”

     (**) “Here is a draft I have made for you.  Read it.  I should
     think this would do.”

The important and exacting business of government, which became at last the dominating preoccupation in Albert’s mind, still left unimpaired his old tastes and interests; he remained devoted to art, to science, to philosophy, and a multitude of subsidiary activities showed how his energies increased as the demands upon them grew.  For whenever duty called, the Prince was all alertness.  With indefatigable perseverance he opened museums, laid the foundation stones of hospitals, made speeches to the Royal Agricultural Society, and attended meetings of the British Association.  The National Gallery particularly interested him:  he drew up careful regulations for the arrangement of the pictures according to schools; and he attempted—­though in vain—­to have the whole collection transported to South Kensington.  Feodora, now the Princess Hohenlohe, after a visit to England, expressed in a letter to Victoria her admiration of Albert both as a private and a public character.  Nor did she rely only on her own opinion.  “I must just copy out,” she said, “what Mr. Klumpp wrote to me some little time ago, and which is quite true—­’Prince Albert is one of the few Royal personages who can sacrifice to any principle (as soon as it has become evident to them to be good and noble) all those notions (or sentiments) to which others, owing to their narrow-mindedness, or to the prejudices of their rank, are so thoroughly inclined strongly to cling.’  There is something so truly religious in this,” the Princess added, “as well as humane and just, most soothing to my feelings which are so often hurt and disturbed by what I hear and see.”

Victoria, from the depth of her heart, subscribed to all the eulogies of Feodora and Mr. Klumpp.  She only found that they were insufficient.  As she watched her beloved Albert, after toiling with state documents and public functions, devoting every spare moment of his time to domestic duties, to artistic appreciation, and to intellectual improvements; as she listened to him cracking his jokes at the luncheon table, or playing Mendelssohn on the organ, or pointing out the merits of Sir Edwin Landseer’s pictures; as she followed him round while he gave instructions about the breeding of cattle, or decided that the Gainsboroughs must be hung higher up so that the Winterhalters might be properly seen—­she felt perfectly certain that no other wife had ever had such a husband.  His mind was apparently capable of everything, and she was hardly surprised to learn that he had made an important discovery for the conversion of sewage into agricultural manure.  Filtration from below upwards, he explained, through some appropriate medium, which retained the solids and set free the fluid sewage for irrigation, was the principle of the scheme.  “All previous plans,” he said, “would have cost millions; mine costs next to nothing.”  Unfortunately, owing to a slight miscalculation, the invention proved to be impracticable; but Albert’s intelligence was unrebuffed, and he passed on, to plunge with all his accustomed ardour into a prolonged study of the rudiments of lithography.