Very little is known of her Majesty outside of the British Isles. Almost every other female sovereign has publicity given to all her secret actions, and her private life is discussed with great personal freedom, in the cafes and clubs. A thousand stories have been set afloat and circulated in regard to Madam Isabella, lately Queen of Spain, and but a few of them are true. Rochefort in his papers, "The Lantern" and the "Marsellaise," has not hesitated to pour columns of abuse upon the head of the Empress Eugenie, a lady whose principal fault is a fondness for low necked dresses.
PORTRAIT OF THE QUEEN.
Two women have hitherto escaped this kind of slander, and these two are the Empress of Austria and Queen Victoria. The reason is palpable in the case of the Empress of Austria; she is an imperial lady to discuss whose private life it would be dangerous if done on Austrian territory.
In regard to the Queen of England, the reason why silence is kept in relation to her private life is because of a sneaking regard for the manners, customs, and good opinions of titled individuals among most American travelers.
The Queen has been a good wife and mother, but in these two qualities she is more than equaled by thousands of American women. She is no better and no worse than the average married woman; has her faults, her weaknesses, and her good qualities, and it is among her own people that her failings find their loudest trumpeters.
In honestly dealing with these stories I shall not stop to give the gross yarns which are spun by the Jenkinses of the press, who make what they call an honest penny by chronicling all the loose street scandal that is poured into their ears.
The London Times, the leading paper of England, has on several occasions soundly berated the Queen for her continued seclusion from the public, her exalted position being, it is said, her only excuse, and subsequent to the death of Prince Albert this seclusion was continued so long that the shopkeepers and tradesmen who profit by the receptions, festivals, and gaieties of the court, were loud in their complaints of what they deemed to be an overstrained and extravagant grief.