"Let woman make herself her own
To give or keep, to live and learn, and be
All that not harms distinctive womanhood.
For woman is not undevelopt man,
But diverse; could we make her as the man,
Sweet love were slain; his dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference."
[14] I had occasion to record in the Prince's Life (vol. iii. p. 248) a somewhat similar impression on Napoleon III. and his Empress with regard to the Tuileries, in the following extract from the Queen's Diary: "Speaking of the want of liberty attaching to our position, he (the Emperor) said the Empress felt this greatly, and called the Tuileries une belle prison."
[15] Published, London, 1868, by Smith, Elder, & Co.
[16] General Grey's duties were immediately taken up by Colonel, afterwards General, Sir Henry Ponsonby, who discharged them with conspicuous zeal and ability till he was struck down by fatal illness in January 1895.
[17] These letters were from Royal personages on the subject of the Emperor's death.
[18] See p. 51, ante.
[19] Féodore Victoire, Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen, who died on the 12th of February 1872. Her mother, the Queen's half-sister, Feodora, Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, survived her only a few months, dying on the 23rd of September 1872.
[20] He died on the 23rd of May 1874. The Queen came from Windsor to visit him at his house in London, when he was near his end. A few days before his death I took my leave of him. He was in great pain, but his bright sparkling spirit remained. He touched my heart by saying how sorry he was he had only known me within the last few years. On my expressing a hope that we might meet again in the Hereafter, "Ah! let us hope so!" he replied, adding, like the bibliophile of bibliophiles that he was, "and that you will find me in an editio nova et emendatior."
[21] In my library in London there happened to be a niche, as if made to receive this beautiful replica of the Mausoleum monument, where it has ever since remained.
[22] I had given to the Queen a fine proof before letters of her portrait, as a girl, by Fowler, and she wrote to say that "the bust by Behnes, from which Fowler took his picture, was done in 1827, when the Queen was eight years and a half."