gave his support to the progressive elements in the country.  It was not until 1848, however, that the strain became really serious.  In that year of revolutions, when, in all directions and with alarming frequency, crowns kept rolling off royal heads, Albert and Victoria were appalled to find that the policy of England was persistently directed—­in Germany, in Switzerland, in Austria, in Italy, in Sicily—­so as to favour the insurgent forces.  The situation, indeed, was just such a one as the soul of Palmerston loved.  There was danger and excitement, the necessity of decision, the opportunity for action, on every hand.  A disciple of Canning, with an English gentleman’s contempt and dislike of foreign potentates deep in his heart, the spectacle of the popular uprisings, and of the oppressors bundled ignominiously out of the palaces they had disgraced, gave him unbounded pleasure, and he was determined that there should be no doubt whatever, all over the Continent, on which side in the great struggle England stood.  It was not that he had the slightest tincture in him of philosophical radicalism; he had no philosophical tinctures of any kind; he was quite content to be inconsistent—­to be a Conservative at home and a Liberal abroad.  There were very good reasons for keeping the Irish in their places; but what had that to do with it?  The point was this—­when any decent man read an account of the political prisons in Naples his gorge rose.  He did not want war; but he saw that without war a skilful and determined use of England’s power might do much to further the cause of the Liberals in Europe.  It was a difficult and a hazardous game to play, but he set about playing it with delighted alacrity.  And then, to his intense annoyance, just as he needed all his nerve and all possible freedom of action, he found himself being hampered and distracted at every turn by... those people at Osborne.  He saw what it was; the opposition was systematic and informed, and the Queen alone would have been incapable of it; the Prince was at the bottom of the whole thing.  It was exceedingly vexatious; but Palmerston was in a hurry, and could not wait; the Prince, if he would insist upon interfering, must be brushed on one side.

Albert was very angry.  He highly disapproved both of Palmerston’s policy and of his methods of action.  He was opposed to absolutism; but in his opinion Palmerston’s proceedings were simply calculated to substitute for absolutism, all over Europe, something no better and very possibly worse—­the anarchy of faction and mob violence.  The dangers of this revolutionary ferment were grave; even in England Chartism was rampant—­a sinister movement, which might at any moment upset the Constitution and abolish the Monarchy.  Surely, with such dangers at home, this was a very bad time to choose for encouraging lawlessness abroad.  He naturally took a particular interest in Germany.  His instincts, his affections, his prepossessions, were ineradicably German; Stockmar