It was.  The enthusiasm was universal; even the bitterest scoffers were converted, and joined in the chorus of praise.  Congratulations from public bodies poured in; the City of Paris gave a great fete to the Exhibition committee; and the Queen and the Prince made a triumphal progress through the North of England.  The financial results were equally remarkable.  The total profit made by the Exhibition amounted to a sum of L165,000, which was employed in the purchase of land for the erection of a permanent National Museum in South Kensington.  During the six months of its existence in Hyde Park over six million persons visited it, and not a single accident occurred.  But there is an end to all things; and the time had come for the Crystal Palace to be removed to the salubrious seclusion of Sydenham.  Victoria, sad but resigned, paid her final visit.  “It looked so beautiful,” she said.  “I could not believe it was the last time I was to see it.  An organ, accompanied by a fine and powerful wind instrument called the sommerophone, was being played, and it nearly upset me.  The canvas is very dirty, the red curtains are faded and many things are very much soiled, still the effect is fresh and new as ever and most beautiful.  The glass fountain was already removed... and the sappers and miners were rolling about the little boxes just as they did at the beginning.  It made us all very melancholy.”  But more cheerful thoughts followed.  When all was over, she expressed her boundless satisfaction in a dithyrambic letter to the Prime Minister.  Her beloved husband’s name, she said, was for ever immortalised, and that this was universally recognised by the country was a source to her of immense happiness and gratitude.  “She feels grateful to Providence,” Her Majesty concluded, “to have permitted her to be united to so great, so noble, so excellent a Prince, and this year will ever remain the proudest and happiest of her life.  The day of the closing of the Exhibition (which the Queen regretted much she could not witness), was the twelfth anniversary of her betrothal to the Prince, which is a curious coincidence.”

CHAPTER V. LORD PALMERSTON

I

In 1851 the Prince’s fortunes reached their high-water mark.  The success of the Great Exhibition enormously increased his reputation and seemed to assure him henceforward a leading place in the national life.  But before the year was out another triumph, in a very different sphere of action, was also his.  This triumph, big with fateful consequences, was itself the outcome of a series of complicated circumstances which had been gathering to a climax for many years.