The Queen’s birthday was approaching even before the Prince left England; and the latter had already given orders for the preparation of two gifts to her Majesty, which he knew would be very acceptable. On the 5th of March, Prince Albert asked Mr. Eastlake, the painter, if he could execute by the 24th of May a little picture of angels, such as he had introduced into his fresco in the pavilion of Buckingham Palace Gardens. He promised to do the picture by the time mentioned, although he was already at work on one for her Majesty. The other present was a miniature portrait of the Prince himself, by Thorburn, taken in armour, in accordance with a wish frequently expressed by the Queen. The portrait is a full-length, and is said by her Majesty to give the Prince’s real expression more than anything that she knew. “During the fatal illness, and on the last morning of his life,” she writes on the 20th of December, 1873, “he was wonderfully like this picture.” The lower part of the face was done in half an hour, and the whole character and aspect are extremely noble. The two pictures were presented to the Queen on her birthday, at Claremont, where the Royal couple were staying.
The King of Saxony was at this time expected at Buckingham Palace, and he arrived there on the 1st of June. Only two days before, her Majesty and the Prince had been somewhat surprised at hearing that the Emperor of Russia was on his way to visit the English Court, and that he might be looked for at almost any moment. He reached London on the night of June 1st, and remained until the following morning at the Russian Embassy. Next day, he was brought by Prince Albert to Buckingham Palace, where he became the guest of her Majesty, though he again went to the Embassy at night, having resolved for the present not to occupy the apartments prepared for him at the Palace. On the 3rd of June, he was escorted by Prince Albert from the Slough Station to Windsor Castle, whither the Court had now removed.
The habits of this Northern potentate were in some respects remarkably simple and austere. All through his life, he slept on a leathern sack, stuffed with hay or straw. The sack thus filled was stretched upon a camp-bed, and the Emperor never intermitted this custom, even when on a visit to foreign Courts. He produced a very marked impression on the Queen and Prince Albert, and the former, writing to her uncle, the King of the Belgians, on the 4th of June, observes of the Emperor:--“He is certainly a very striking man, still very handsome; his profile is beautiful, and his manners most dignified and graceful; extremely civil, quite alarmingly so, as he is so full of attention and _politesse_. But the expression of the eyes is severe, and unlike anything I ever saw before. He gives Albert and myself the impression of a man who is not happy, and on whom the burden of his immense power and position weighs heavily and painfully. He seldom smiles, and, when he does, the expression is not a happy one. He is very easy to get on with.” Lady Lyttelton says in one of her letters:--“The only fault in his face is that he has pale eyelashes, and his enormous and very brilliant eyes have no shade; besides which, they have the awful look given by occasional glimpses of white above the eyeball, which comes from his father Paul, I suppose, and gives a savage wildness, for a moment, pretty often.”