The good Prince of Prussia you will have been pleased to talk to and see. Having lived with him for a fortnight on a very intimate footing, we have been able to appreciate his real worth fully; he is so honest and frank, and so steady of purpose and courageous.
Poor dear Peel is to be buried to-day. The sorrow and grief at his death are most touching, and the country mourns over him as over a father. Every one seems to have lost a personal friend.
As I have much to write, you will forgive me ending here. You will be glad to hear that poor Aunt Gloucester is wonderfully calm and resigned. My poor dear Albert, who had been so fresh and well when we came back, looks so pale and fagged again. He has felt, and feels, Sir Robert's loss dreadfully. He feels he has lost a second father.
May God bless and protect you all, you dear ones! Ever your devoted Niece,
Victoria R.
Footnote 29: See ante, [vol. i. p. 437].
Queen Victoria to Viscount Palmerston.
Osborne, 19th July 1850.
Before this draft to Lord Bloomfield about Greece is sent, it would be well to consider whether Lord Palmerston is justified in calling the Minister of the Interior of Greece "a notorious defaulter to the amount of 200,000 drachms,"30 and should he be so, whether it is a proper thing for the Queen's Foreign Secretary to say in a public despatch!
Footnote 30: The Convention of the 18th of April (see ante, p. 242, note 1) had decided that £8500 should be distributed among the claimants, and that Don Pacifico's special claim against Portugal should be referred to arbitration. Ultimately he was awarded only an insignificant sum.