The party then drove through the principal streets of Salford and Manchester—the junction of the two being marked by a splendid triumphal arch, under which the Mayor and Corporation (dressed for the first time in robes of office—so democratic was Manchester), again met the Queen and presented her with a bouquet. At the Exchange she alighted to receive another address, to which she read an answer, and knighted the Mayor. Her Majesty missed "fine buildings," of which, with the exception of huge warehouses and factories, Manchester had then none to boast; but she was particularly struck by the demeanour of the inhabitants, in addition to what she was pleased to call their "most gratifying cheering and enthusiasm." "The order and good behaviour of the people, who were not placed behind any barriers, were the most complete we have seen in our many progresses through capitals and cities—London, Glasgow, Dublin, Edinburgh—for there never was a running crowd, nobody moved and therefore everybody saw well, and there was no squeezing…." The Queen heard afterwards that she had seen a million of human beings that day. In the afternoon her Majesty and the Prince, returned to Worsley.
Henry Greville tells an almost piteous incident of this visit, in relation to the Duke of Wellington and his advanced age, with the infirmities that could no longer be repelled. After saying that in order to prevent the procession's becoming too large, no other guest at Worsley was admitted into it, except the privileged old Duke, whom the teller of the story describes as driving in the carriage with Henry Greville's sister, Lady Enfield, one of the ladies in attendance on the Queen, he goes on to mention "he (the Duke) was received with extraordinary enthusiasm; notwithstanding Lady Enfield had to nudge him constantly, to keep him awake, both going and coming, with very little success." Lady Enfield adds a note to her brother's narrative. "The whole scene was one of the most exciting I ever saw in my life. Being carried away by the general enthusiasm, and feeling that the people would be disappointed if no notice was taken of their cheering, I at last exclaimed 'Duke, Duke, that's for you.' Thereupon he opened his eyes, and obediently made his well-known salutation, two fingers to the brim of his hat."
The next morning when the Prince had started by seven o'clock to inspect a model factory near Bolton, while there was a long and busy day before them, the Queen made a little entry in her journal which will find a sorrowful echo in many a faithful heart, "This day is full of sad recollections, being the anniversary of the loss of my beloved Louise (Queen of the Belgians), that kind, precious friend, that angelic being whose loss I shall ever feel."
The same pleasant passage was made by the canal back to Patricroft, where the railway carriages were entered and the train steamed to Stockport. Crewe, Stafford—there another old soldier, Lord Anglesey, was waiting—Rugby, Weedon, Wolverton, and Watford, then at five o'clock the railway journey ended. The royal carriages were in attendance, and rest and home were near at hand. The day had been hot and fatiguing, but the evening was soft and beautiful with moonlight; a final change of horses at Uxbridge, the carriage shut when the growing darkness prevented any farther necessity for seeing and being seen; at half-past seven, Windsor, and the three little children still up and at the door "well and pleased."
From Windsor the Court went for some days to London for the closing of the Exhibition. The number of visitors had been six millions two hundred thousand, and the total receipts five hundred thousand pounds. There had not been a single accident, "We ought, indeed, to be thankful to God for such a success," the Prince wrote reverently. On the 14th of October the Queen paid a farewell visit to the place in which she had been so much interested, with the regret natural on such an occasion. "It looked so beautiful," she wrote in her journal, "that I could not believe it was the last time I was to see it." But already the dismantling had begun.
The Queen refers in the next breath to a heroine of the Exhibition, an old Cornish woman named Mary Kerlynack, who had found the spirit to walk several hundreds of miles to behold the wonder of her generation. This day she was at one of the doors to see another sight, the Queen. "A most hale old woman" her Majesty thought Mary, "who was near crying at my looking at her."
On the 15th, a cheerlessly wet day, in keeping with a somewhat melancholy scene, Prince Albert and his fellow commissioners closed the Exhibition—a ceremony at which it was not judged desirable the Queen should be present, though she grieved not to witness the end as well as the beginning. "How sad and strange to think this great and bright time has passed away like a dream," her Majesty wrote once more in her diary. The day of the closing of the Exhibition happened to be the twelfth anniversary of the Queen's betrothal to the Prince.
The tidings arrived in the course of November of the death, in his eighty-first year, in the old palace of Herrenhausen, on the 18th of the month, of the King of Hanover, the fifth, and last surviving son of George III and Queen Charlotte. He had been more popular as a king than as a prince.
The arrival of Kossuth in England in the autumn of 1851 had brought a disturbing element into international politics. But it was left for Louis Napoleon's coup d'état in Paris on the 2nd of December, when the blood shed so mercilessly on the Boulevards was still fresh in men's minds, to get Lord Palmerston into a dilemma, from which there was no disentanglement but the loss of office on his part.
An impetus, great though less lasting than it seemed, was given this year to emigration to Australia, by the discovery in the colony of gold in quartz beds, under much the same conditions that the precious metal had been found in California. The diggings, with the chance of a large nugget, became for a time the favourite dream of adventurers. Nay, the dream grew to such an absorbing desire, that men heard of it as a disease known as "the gold fever." And quiet people at home were told that it was hardly safe for a ship to enter some of the Australian harbours, on account of the certainty of the desertion of the crew, under whatever penalties, that they might repair to the last El Dorado.