It is as well, therefore, that events took the shape they did, and that the mind and character of the Princess were trained upon simple lines in accordance with the practice of the average citizen families subsequently to be her subjects. In years to come the Queen was perhaps better able to look at events and persons from the point of view of the majority of her people than would have been possible if her education had given her a high place among the intellectuals. It was a saving grace throughout her long reign that while she could recognise intellect and capacity, her sympathies were with average people, whose feelings and opinions she more readily understood and in reality represented.

In these days, when Accomplishments, as they were called in the first half of the nineteenth century, are no longer esteemed in young people, and their place has been usurped by athletic exercises, it is difficult to describe, in a way that appeals to the serious imagination, the girlish tastes of Princess Victoria. Perhaps the world has not lost much because young ladies to-day learn to play golf and have ceased to sing duets.

In the thirties, music and painting and a knowledge of modern languages were the necessary equipment of a girl destined to move in Society. It mattered little how reedy and small the voice, she was expected to vocalise like Grisi and to sing duets with Mario.

The Queen had been well trained musically, according to the lights of those days. She could appreciate the simpler forms of melody, especially Italian opera, while she could sing and play sufficiently well to give much pleasure to herself and mild pleasure to others. As a linguist, as a reader, and as a writer of letters and memoranda she had no pretensions to pre-eminence; but she could speak modern languages as well as any Queen is called upon to do, she could read and appreciate high literature, although not without effort, and she could express herself with pungency and vigour, although not with any marked literary skill or distinction of style.

Her drawings and water-colour sketches were through life a constant source of happiness to the Queen. There are at Windsor literally hundreds of small sketch-books, containing reminiscences of her journeys and sojournings in Scotland and in Italy, again not of high artistic merit, but sufficiently vital to suggest the reflection that a young lady of to-day is possibly no gainer by having substituted the golf-club for the pencil.

The Queen’s teachers were excellent, commonplace people, and they left precisely those traces on her mind that might have been expected. Her character was another matter. They could not and did not influence that, and it is the character of the Queen that places her in the small category of rulers who have not only deserved well of their country, but have left an indelible stamp upon the life of their people.

III

These Journals were commenced in the year 1832, a year memorable in our history for the fruition of hopes deeply cherished by the political party that had arisen, under the auspices of Canning, after the close of the struggle with Napoleon.

During the year when the first Reform Bill became the law of the land, the passions of men had been deeply stirred throughout Great Britain. The political struggle, begun seventeen years before, had come to a head. The classes still paramount had found themselves face to face with the desires and aspirations of classes hitherto subordinate to have a share in the government of the country. These feelings had grown fiercer year by year, and, encouraged by the Whig party headed by Earl Grey, had found ultimate expression in the Reform Bill of 1832, framed under the ægis of that Minister. All over Europe the stream of change and reform, loosed by the French Revolution and subsequently checked by the Congress of Vienna, began once more to flow. During the sixteen years that followed Princess Victoria’s first entry in these Journals, the waters of Revolution had flooded Europe. Thrones and institutions in every European country were shaken, many of them to their foundations, and some with disastrous results. Fortunately for Great Britain, her statesmen had anticipated the events of 1848, and the Reform Bill had so far satisfied the aspirations of the hitherto unenfranchised classes as to render innocuous the frothing of agitators during that tragic year of revolution. In aptitude for anticipating social and political change and avoiding violent manifestations of popular will, the English race stands pre-eminent. Our people as well as our statesmen have from the earliest times proved themselves to be experts in the art of government, and the history of Europe is a commentary upon that gift of the British nation.

There have, of course, been moments when the atmosphere of politics has been highly charged with electricity. Such a moment occurred in 1832. A storm broke with unusual violence over the head of William IV. The House of Lords was bitterly hostile to a Bill, accepted by the House of Commons and supported with enthusiasm by the majority of his subjects. There was no machinery existing under the Constitution for adjusting these differences except that of creating a sufficient number of Peers to ensure the passage of the Reform Bill through the House of Lords. The King therefore found himself in the unpleasant position of having to place his prerogative of creating peers in the hands of his Ministers, or else by his own act to dispense with their services. The choice found him undecided and left him baffled. He was not acute enough to see that in the existing state of public opinion he had no choice. If he had possessed wit to read the signs of the times, it is doubtful whether he would have had sufficient single-minded courage to take immediate action in accordance with the opinion he had formed. Penetrating vision the King lacked, and responsibility was distasteful to him. Consequently he was not only weak, but he showed weakness. It was clear that the Government of Lord Grey held unimpaired the confidence of the House of Commons and possessed the full approval of the country. Every intelligent observer realised that the Reform Bill, in spite of its aristocratic foes, in spite of the prophets of evil, and in spite of its inherent defects, was bound to be passed into law. King William, however, conceived it to be his duty to endeavour to find an alternative Government. It was as certain as anything could be in politics, that Sir Robert Peel would not, and that the Duke of Wellington could not, come to his assistance. There was something pitiful about the spectacle of the old sailor-King casting about for a safe anchorage, and finding one cable parting after another. Security was only to be found in the Ministers who had advised him, in the last resort, to use his prerogative for the purpose of swamping a majority in the House of Lords that hesitated to bow to the will of the people. Ultimately he was constrained to accept their advice, but it was only after a loss of personal dignity and a distinct weakening of the authority of the Crown. The King, men said, had touted about to find Ministers to serve him, and had failed to find them. This humiliation, at least, King William might have avoided, had he possessed a clearer vision of possibilities and greater firmness of character.