He was a favourite of the Queen, and she gave him as a residence a house and grounds in Richmond Park. He was a man of the world and an agreeable talker, very well read, fond of quoting poetry, and especially pleased if he could indulge in reminiscences in his own circle of what his royal mistress had said at her last visit.
Finally, mention must be made of one who, though he held no high position of State, can with justice be regarded as both friend and adviser of the Queen—John Brown. He entered the Queen's service at Balmoral, became later a gillie to the Prince Consort, and in 1851 the Queen's personal outdoor attendant. He was a man of a very straightforward nature and blunt speech, and even his Royal Mistress was not safe at times from criticism. In spite of his rough manner, he possessed many admirable qualities, and on his death in 1883 the Queen caused a granite seat to be erected in the grounds of Osborne with the following inscription:
A TRUER, NOBLER, TRUSTIER HEART, MORE LOVING
AND MORE LOYAL, NEVER BEAT WITHIN
A HUMAN BREAST.
[CHAPTER XIII: Queen and Empire]
What should they know of England who only England know?
The England of Queen Elizabeth was the England of Shakespeare:
This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise;
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
In Tennyson's Princess we find an echo of these words, where the poet, in contrasting England and France, monarchy and republic—much to the disadvantage of the latter—says:
God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off,
And keeps our Britain, whole within herself,
A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled.
But at a later date, in an "Epilogue to the Queen," at the close of the Idylls of the King, Tennyson has said farewell to his narrow insular views, and speaks of