Chapter 10

PUBLIC AND DOMESTIC INTERESTS--FRESH ATTACK UPON THE QUEEN.

The Queen and the Prince were now pledged--alike by principle and habit--to hard work. They were both early risers, but before her Majesty joined Prince Albert in their sitting-room, where their writing-tables stood side by side, we are told he had already, even in winter, by the light of the green German lamp which he had introduced into England, prepared many papers to be considered by her Majesty, and done everything in his power to lighten her labours as a sovereign.

Lord Campbell describes an audience which he had from the Queen in February. "I was obliged to make an excursion to Windsor on Saturday, and have an audience before Prince Albert's lunch. I was with the Queen in her closet, _solus cum solâ_. But I should first tell you my difficulty about getting from the station at Slough to the Castle. When we go down for a council we have a special train and carriages provided for us. I consulted Morpeth, who answered, 'I can only tell you how I went last--on the top of an omnibus; but the Queen was a little shocked.' I asked how she found it out. He said he had told her himself to amuse her, but that I should be quite _en règle_ by driving up in a fly or cab. So I drove up in my one horse conveyance, and the lord-in-waiting announced my arrival to her Majesty. I was shown into the royal closet, a very small room with one window, and soon she entered by another door all alone. My business was the appointment of a sheriff for the County Palatine, which was soon despatched. We then talked of the state of the finances of the Duchy, and I ventured to offer her my felicitations on the return of this auspicious day--her wedding-day. I lunched with the maids of honour, and got back in time to take a part in very important deliberations in the Cabinet."

In February, 1849, the Queen opened Parliament in person. Perhaps the greatest source of anxiety was now the Sikh War, in which the warlike tribes were gaining advantages over the English troops, though Mooltan had been reduced the previous month. A drawn battle was fought between Lord Gough's force and that of Chuttar Singh at Chillianwallah. While the English were not defeated, their losses in men, guns and standards were sore and humiliating to the national pride. Sir Charles Napier was ordered out, and, in spite of bad health, obeyed the order. But in the meantime Lord Gough had retrieved his losses by winning at Goojerat a great victory over the Sikhs and Afghans, which in the end compelled the surrender of the enemy, with the restoration of the captured guns and standards. On the 29th of March the kingdom of the Punjaub was proclaimed as existing no longer, and the State was annexed to British India; while the beneficial influence of Edwardes and the Lawrences rendered the wild Sikhs more loyal subjects, in a future time of need, than the trained and petted Sepoy mercenaries proved themselves.

On the afternoon of the 19th of May, after the Queen had held one of her most splendid Drawing-rooms, when she was driving in a carriage with three of her children up Constitution Hill, she was again fired at by a man standing within the railings of the Green Park. Prince Albert was on horseback, so far in advance that he did not know what had occurred, till told of it by the Queen when he assisted her to alight. But her Majesty did not lose her perfect self-possession. She stood up, motioned to the coachman, who had stopped the carriage for an instant, to go on, and then diverted the children's attention by talking to them. The man who had fired was immediately arrested. Indeed, he would have been violently assaulted by the mob, had he not been protected by the police. He proved to be an Irishman, named Hamilton, from Limerick, who had come over from Ireland five years before, and worked as a bricklayer's labourer and a navvy both in England and France. Latterly he had been earning a scanty livelihood by doing chance jobs. There was this to distinguish him from the other dastardly assailants of the Queen: he was not a half-crazed, morbidly conceited boy, though he also had no conceivable motive for what he