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LIFE OF HER MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY THE QUEEN

BY SARAH TYTLER EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY LORD RONALD GOWER, F.S.A.

IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I.

Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada, in the year Eighteen Hundred and Eighty-five, by GEORGE VIRTUE, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture.

PREFACE.

I have been asked to write a few words of preface to this work.

If the life-long friendship of my mother with her Majesty, which gained for me the honour of often seeing the Queen, or a deep feeling of loyalty and affection for our sovereign, which is shared by all her subjects, be accepted as a qualification, I gratefully respond to the call, but I feel that no written words of mine can add value to the following pages.

Looking over some papers lately, I found the following note on a sketch which I had accidentally met with in Windsor Castle—a coloured chalk drawing, a mere study of one of the Queen's hands, by Sir David Wilkie, probably made for his picture now in the corridor of the Castle, representing the first council of Victoria. Of this sketch I wrote as follows:—

"I was looking in one of the private rooms at Windsor Castle at a chalk sketch, by Sir David Wilkie, of a fair, soft, long-fingered, dimpled hand, with a graceful wrist attached to a rounded arm. 'Only a woman's hand,' might Swift, had he seen that sketch, have written below. Only a sketch of a woman's hand; but what memories that sketch recalls! How many years ago Wilkie drew it I know not: that great artist died in the month of June, 1841, so that more than forty years have passed, at least, since he made that drawing. The hand that limned this work has long ago suffered 'a sea change.' And the hand which he portrayed? That is still among the living—still occupied with dispensing aid and comfort to the suffering and the afflicted, for the original is that of a Queen, beloved as widely as her realms extend—the best of sovereigns, the kindest-hearted of women."

To write the life of Queen Victoria is a task which many authors might well have felt incompetent to undertake. To succeed in writing it is an honour of which any author may well be proud. This honour I humbly think has been realised in the work of which these poor lines may form the preface.

RONALD GOWER.

CONTENTS

VOL. I.

CHAP.
I. Sixty-Three Years Since.
II. Childhood.
III. Youth.
IV. The Accession.
V. The Proroguing Of Parliament, The Visit To Guildhall; And The
Coronation.
VI. The Maiden Queen.
VII. The Betrothal.
VIII. The Marriage.
IX. A Royal Pair.
X. Royal Occupations.—An Attempt On The Queen's Life.
XI. The First Christening.—The Season Of 1841.
XII. Birth Of The Prince Of Wales.—The Afghan Disasters.—Visit Of The
King Of Prussia.—The Queen's Plantagenet Ball.
XIII. Fresh Attempts Against The Queen's Life.—Mendelssohn.—Death Of
The Duc D'Orleans.
XIV. The Queen's First Visit To Scotland.
XV. A Marriage, A Death, And A Birth In The Royal Family.—A Palace
Home.
XVI. The Condemnation Of The English Duel.—Another Marriage.—The
Queen's Visit To Chateau D'Eu.
XVII. The Queen's Trip To Ostend.—Visits To Drayton, Chatsworth, And
Belvoir.
XVIII. Allies From Afar.—Death And Absence.—Birthday Greetings.
XIX. Royal Visitors.—The Birth Of Prince Alfred.—A Northern Retreat.
XX. Louis Philippe's Visit.—The Opening Of The Royal Exchange.

CHAPTER I. SIXTY-THREE YEARS SINCE.

The 24th of May, 1819, was a memorable and happy day for England, though like many such days, it was little noticed at the time. Sixty-three years since! Do many of us quite realise what England was like then; how much it differed from the England of to-day, even though some of us have lived as many years? It is worth while devoting a chapter to an attempt to recall that England.

A famous novel had for its second heading, "'Tis sixty years since." That novel—"Waverley"—was published anonymously just five years before 1819, and, we need not say, proved an era in literature. The sixty years behind him to which Walter Scott—a man of forty-three—looked over his shoulder, carried him as far back as the landing of Prince Charlie in Moidart, and the brief romantic campaign of the '45, with the Jacobite songs which embalmed it and kept it fresh in Scotch memories.

The wounds dealt at Waterloo still throbbed and burnt on occasions in 1819. Many a scarred veteran and limping subaltern continued the heroes of remote towns and villages, or starred it at Bath or Tunbridge. The warlike fever, which had so long raged in the country, even when ruined manufacturers and starving mechanics were praying for peace or leading bread-riots, had but partially abated; because whatever wrong to trade, and misery to the poor, closed ports and war prices might have meant, the people still depended upon their armed defenders, and in the hardest adversity found the heart to share their triumphs, to illuminate cities, light bonfires, cheer lustily, and not grudge parliamentary grants to the country's protectors. The "Eagle" was caged on his rock in the ocean, to eat his heart out in less than half-a-dozen years. Still there was no saying what might happen, and the sight of a red coat and a sword remained cheering—especially to soft hearts.

The commercial world was slowly recovering from its dire distress, but its weavers and mechanics were blazing up into fierce, futile struggle with the powers by which masses of the people believed themselves oppressed. If the men of war had no longer anything to do abroad, there was great fear that work might be found for them at home. All Europe was looking on in the expectation that England was about to follow the example of France, and indulge in a revolution on its own account—not bloodless this time.

Rarely since the wars of the Commonwealth had high treason been so much in men's mouths as it was in Great Britain during this and the following year. Sedition smouldered and burst into flame—not in one place alone, but at every point of the compass. The mischief was not confined to a single class; it prevailed mostly among the starving operatives, but it also fired minds of quite another calibre. Rash, generous spirits in every rank became affected, especially after an encounter between the blinded, maddened mobs and the military, when dragoons and yeomanry charged with drawn swords, and women and children went down under the horses' hoofs. Great riotous meetings were dispersed by force at Manchester, Birmingham, Paisley. Political trials went on at every assize. Bands of men lay in York, Lancaster, and Warwick gaols. At Stockport Sir Charles Wolseley told a crowd armed with bludgeons that he had been in Paris at the beginning of the French Revolution, that he was the first man who made a kick at the Bastille, and that he hoped he should be present at the demolition of another Bastille.

On the 22nd of August, 1819, Sir Francis Burdett wrote to his electors at Westminster: "….It seems our fathers were not such fools as some would make us believe in opposing the establishment of a standing army and sending King William's Dutch guards out of the country. Yet would to heaven they had been Dutchmen, or Switzers, or Russians, or Hanoverians, or anything rather than Englishmen who have done such deeds. What! kill men unarmed, unresisting; and, gracious God! women too, disfigured, maimed, cut down, and trampled on by dragoons! Is this England? This a Christian land—a land of freedom?"

For this, and a great deal more, Sir Francis, after a protracted trial, was sentenced to pay a fine of two thousand pounds and to be imprisoned for three months in the Marshalsea of the Court. In the Cato Street conspiracy the notorious Arthur Thistlewood and his fellow-conspirators planned to assassinate the whole of the Cabinet Ministers when they were dining at Lord Harrowby's house, in Grosvenor Square. Forgery and sheep-stealing were still punishable by death. Truly these were times of trouble in England.

In London a serious difficulty presented itself when Queen Charlotte grew old and ailing, and there was no royal lady, not merely to hold a Drawing-room, but to lend the necessary touch of dignity and decorum to the gaieties of the season. The exigency lent a new impetus to the famous balls at Almack's. An anonymous novel of the day, full of society scandal and satire, described the despotic sway of the lady patronesses, the struggles and intrigues for vouchers, and the distinguished crowd when the object was obtained. The earlier hours, alas! only gave longer time for the drinking habits of the Regency.

It is a little difficult to understand what young people did with themselves in the country when lawn-tennis and croquet were not. There was archery for the few, and a good deal more amateur gardening and walking, with field-sports, of course, for the lads.

The theatre in 1819 was more popular than it showed itself twenty years later. Every country town of any pretensions, in addition to its assembly rooms had its theatre, which reared good actors, to which provincial tours brought London stars. Genteel comedy was not past its perfection. Adaptations of the Waverley novels, with musical dramas and melodramas, drew great houses. Miss O'Neill had just retired, but Ellen Tree was making a success, and Macready was already distinguished in his profession. Still the excellence and prestige of the stage had declined incontestably since the days of Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble. Edmund Kean, though he did much for tragedy, had a short time to do it in, and was not equal in his passion of genius to the sustained majesty of the sister and brother.

In the same way, the painters' art hovered on the borders of a brilliant epoch. For Lawrence, with his courtly brush, which preferred flattery to truth and cloying suavity to noble simplicity, was not worthy to be named in the same breath with Reynolds. Raeburn came nearer, but his reputation was Scotch. Blake in his inspiration was regarded, not without reason, as a madman. Flaxman called for classic taste to appreciate him; and the fame of English art would have suffered both at home and abroad if a simple, manly lad had not quitted a Scotch manse and sailed from Leith to London, bringing with him indelible memories of the humour and the pathos of peasant life, and reproducing them with such graphic fidelity, power, and tenderness that the whole world has heard of David Wilkie.

The pause between sunset and sunrise, the interregnum which signifies that a phase in some department of the world's history has passed away as a day is done, and a new development of human experience is about to present itself, was over in literature. The romantic period had succeeded the classic. Scott, Coleridge, Southey (Wordsworth stands alone), Byron, Shelley, Keats, Campbell, Moore, were all in the field as poets, carrying the young world with them, and replacing their immediate predecessors, Cowper, Thompson, Young, Beattie, and others of less note.

Sir Walter Scott had also risen high above the horizon as a poet, and still higher as a novelist.

A great start in periodical literature was made in 1802 by the establishment of The Edinburgh Review, under Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, and again in 1817 by the publication of Blackmoods Magazine, with Christopher North for its editor, and Lockhart, De Quincey, Hogg, and Delta among its earlier contributors. The people's friend, Charles Knight, was still editing The Windsor and Eton Express.

In 1819 Sir Humphry Davy was the most popular exponent of science, Sir James Mackintosh of philosophy. In politics, above the thunderstorm of discontent, there was again the pause which anticipates a fresh advance. The great Whig and Tory statesmen, Charles James Fox and William Pitt, were dead in 1806, and their mantles did not fall immediately on fit successors. The abolition of the slave-trade, for which Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay, and Clarkson had fought gallantly and devotedly, was accomplished. But the Catholic Emancipation Bill was still to work its way in the teeth of bitter "No Popery" traditions, and Earl Grey's Reform Bill had not yet seen the light.

George III.'s long reign was drawing to a close. What changes it had seen from the War of American Independence to Waterloo! What woeful personal contrasts since the honest, kindly, comely lad, in his simple kingliness, rode out in the summer sunshine past Holland House, where lady Sarah Lennox was making hay on the lawn, to the days when the blind, mad old king sat in bodily and mental darkness, isolated from the wife and children he had loved so well, immured in his distant palace-rooms in royal Windsor.

His silver beard o'er a bosom spread
Unvexed by life's commotion,
Like a yearly lengthening snow-drift shed
On the calm of a frozen ocean:

Still o'er him oblivion's waters lay,
Though the stream of time kept flowing
When they spoke of our King, 'twas but to say
That the old man's strength was going.

At intervals thus the waves disgorge,
By weakness rent asunder,
A piece of the wreck of the Royal George
For the people's pity and wonder.

Lady Sarah, too, became blind in her age, and, alas! she had trodden darker paths than any prepared for her feet by the visitation of God.

Queen Charlotte had come with her sense and spirit, and ruled for more than fifty years over a pure Court in England. The German princess of sixteen, with her spare little person and large mouth which prevented her from being comely, and her solitary accomplishment of playing on the harpsichord with as much correctness and taste as if she had been taught by Mr. Handel himself, had identified herself with the nation, so that no suspicion of foreign proclivities ever attached to her. Queen Charlotte bore her trials gravely; while those who came nearest to her could tell that she was not only a fierce little dragon of virtue, as she has been described, but a loving woman, full of love's wounds and scars.

The family of George III. and Queen Charlotte consisted of seven sons and his daughters, besides two sons who died in infancy.

George, Prince of Wales, married, 1795, his cousin, Princess Caroline of Brunswick, daughter of the reigning Duke and of Princess Augusta, sister of George III. The Prince and Princess of Wales separated soon after their marriage. Their only child was Princess Charlotte of Wales.

Frederick, Duke of York, married, 1791, Princess Frederica, daughter of the reigning King of Prussia. The couple were childless.

William, Duke of Clarence, married, 1818, Princess Adelaide, of
Saxe-Meiningen. Two daughters were born to them, but both died in infancy.

Edward, Duke of Kent, married, 1818, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, widow of the Prince of Leiningen. Their only child is QUEEN VICTORIA.

Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, married, 1815, Princess Frederica of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, widow, first of Prince Frederick Louis of Prussia,
and second, of the Prince of Saliris-Braunfels. Their only child was
George V., King of Hanover.

Augustus, Duke of Sussex, married morganatically.

Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, married, 1818, Princess Augusta of
Hesse-Cassel, daughter of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. They had three
children—George, Duke of Cambridge; Princess Augusta, Duchess of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz; and Princess Mary, Duchess of Teck.

The daughters of King George and Queen Charlotte were:—

The Princess Royal, married, 1797, the Prince, afterwards King, of
Wurtemberg. Childless.

Princess Augusta, unmarried.

Princess Elizabeth, married, 1818, the Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg.
Childless.

Princess Mary, married, 1816, her cousin, William, Duke of Gloucester.
Childless.

Princess Sophia, unmarried.

Princess Amelia, unmarried.

In 1817 the pathetic idyl, wrought out amidst harsh discord, had found its earthly close in the family vault at Windsor, amidst the lamentations of the whole nation. Princess Charlotte, the candid, fearless, affectionate girl, whose youth had been clouded by the sins and follies of others, but to whom the country had turned as to a stay for the future—fragile, indeed, yet still full of hope—had wedded well, known a year of blissful companionship, and then died in giving birth to a dead heir. It is sixty-five years since that November day, when the bonfires, ready to be lit at every town "cross," on every hill-side, remained dark and cold. Men looked at each other in blank dismay; women wept for the blushing, smiling bride, who had driven with her grandmother through the park on her way to be married not so many months before. There are comparatively few people alive who had come to man's or woman's estate when the shock was experienced; but we have all heard from our predecessors the story which has lent to Claremont a tender, pensive grace, especially for royal young pairs.

Old Queen Charlotte nerved herself to make a last public appearance on the 11th of July, 1818, four months before her death. It was in her presence, at Kew, that a royal marriage and re-marriage were celebrated that day. The Duke of Clarence was married to Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, and the Duke of Kent was re-married, in strict accordance with the English Royal Marriage Act, to Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, the widowed Princess of Leiningen. The last couple had been already united at Coburg in the month of May. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London officiated at the double ceremony. The brides were given away by the Prince Regent. The Queen retired immediately afterwards. But a grand banquet, at which the Prince Regent presided, was given at six o'clock in the evening. An hour later the Duke and Duchess of Kent drove off in her brother, Prince Leopold's, carriage to Claremont.

Of the two bridegrooms we have glimpses from Baron Stockmar, a shrewd observer, who was no flatterer.

The Duke of Clarence, at fifty-three years of age, was the "smallest and least good-looking of the brothers, decidedly like his mother, as talkative as the rest;" and we may add that he was also endowed with a sailor-like frankness, cordiality, and good humour, which did not, however, prevent stormy ebullitions of temper, that recommended him to the nation of that day as a specimen of a princely blue-jacket. Since the navy was not considered a school of manners, he was excused for the absence of much culture or refinement.

"The Duke of Kent, at fifty-one, was a tall, stately man, of soldierlike bearing, already inclined to great corpulence…. He had seen much of the world, and of men. His manner in society was pleasant and easy. He was not without ability and culture, and he possessed great activity. His dependents complained of his strictness and pedantic love of order…. The Duke was well aware that his influence was but small, but this did not prevent him from forwarding the petitions he received whenever it was possible, with his own recommendation, to the public departments…. Liberal political principles were at that time in the minority in England, and as the Duke professed them, it can be imagined how he was hated by the powerful party then dominant. He was on most unfriendly terms with his brothers…. The Duke proved an amiable and courteous, even chivalrous, husband."

Judiciously, in the circumstances, neither of the brides was in her first youth, the future Queen Adelaide having been, at twenty-six, the younger of the two. The Duchess of Kent, a little over thirty, had been already married, in 1803, when she was seventeen, to Prince Emich Charles of Leiningen. Eleven years afterwards, in 1814, she was left a widow with a son and daughter. Four years later she married the Duke of Kent. The brides were very different in looks and outward attractions. The Duchess of Clarence, with hair of a peculiar colour approaching to a lemon tint, weak eyes, and a bad complexion, was plain. She was also quiet, reserved, and a little stiff, while she appears to have had no special accomplishments, beyond a great capacity for carpet-work. The Duchess of Kent, with a fine figure, good features, brown hair and eyes, a pretty pink colour, winning manners, and graceful accomplishments—particularly music, formed a handsome, agreeable woman, "altogether most charming and attractive."

But both Duchesses were possessed of qualities in comparison with which beauty is deceitful and favour is vain—qualities which are calculated to wear well. Queen Adelaide's goodness and kindness, her unselfish, unassuming womanliness and devout resignation to sorrow and suffering, did more than gain and keep the heart of her bluff, eccentric sailor-prince. They secured for her the respectful regard of the nation among whom she dwelt, whether as Queen or Queen-dowager. The Archbishop of Canterbury could say of her, after her husband's death, "For three weeks prior to his (King William's) dissolution, the Queen sat by his bedside, performing for him every office which a sick man could require, and depriving herself of all manner of rest and refection. She underwent labours which I thought no ordinary woman could endure. No language can do justice to the meekness and to the calmness of mind which she sought to keep up before the King, while sorrow was pressing on her heart. Such constancy of affection, I think, was one of the most interesting spectacles that could be presented to a mind desirous of being gratified with the sight of human excellence." [Footnote: Dr. Doran] Such graces, great enough to resist the temptations of the highest rank, might well be singled out as worthy of all imitation.

The Duchess of Kent proved herself the best of mothers—as she was the best of wives, during her short time of wedlock—in the self-renunciation and self-devotion with which, through all difficulties, and in spite of every opposition and misconception, she pursued the even tenor of her way. Not for two or ten, but for well-nigh twenty years, she gave herself up unreservedly, turning her back on her country with all its strong early ties, to rearing a good queen, worthy of her high destiny. England owes much to the memories of Queen Adelaide and the Duchess of Kent, who succeeded Queen Charlotte, the one as Queen Consort, the other as mother of the future sovereign, and not only served as the salt to savour their royal circles, but kept up nobly the tradition of honourable women among the queens and princesses of England, handing down the high obligation to younger generations.

The Duke and Duchess of Kent withdrew to Germany after their re-marriage, and resided at the castle of Amorbach, in Bavaria, part of the inheritance of her young son. The couple returned to England that their child might be born there. The Duke had a strong impression that, notwithstanding his three elder brothers, the Crown would come to him and his children. The persuasion, if they knew it, was not likely to be acceptable to the other Princes. Certainly, in the face of the Duke's money embarrassments, his kinsmen granted no assistance to enable the future Queen of England to be born in her own dominions. It was by the help of private friends that the Duke gratified his natural and wise wish.

Apartments in Kensington Palace were assigned to the couple. The old queen had died at Kew, surrounded by such of her daughters as were in the country, and by several of her sons, in the month of November, 1818. George III. was dragging out his days at Windsor. The Prince Regent occupied Carlton House.

The Kensington of 1819 was not the Kensington of today. In spite of the palace and gardens, which are comparatively little altered, the great crowded quarter, with its Museum and Albert Hall, is as unlike as possible to the courtly village to which the Duke and Duchess of Kent came, and where the Queen spent her youth. That Kensington consisted mainly of a fine old square, built in the time of James II., in which the foreign ambassadors and the bishops in attendance at Court congregated in the days of William and Mary, and Anne, and of a few terraces and blocks of buildings scattered along the Great Western Road, where coaches passed several times a day. Other centres round which smaller buildings clustered were Kensington House—which had lately been a school for the sons of French emigres of rank—the old church, and Holland House, the fine seat of the Riches and the Foxes. The High Street extended a very little way on each side of the church and was best known by its Charity School, and its pastrycook's shop, at the sign of the "Pineapple," to which Queen Caroline had graciously given her own recipe for royal Dutch gingerbread. David Wilkie's apartments represented the solitary studio. Nightingales sang in Holland Lane; blackbirds and thrushes haunted the nurseries and orchards. Great vegetable-gardens met the fields. Here and there stood an old country house in its own grounds. Green lanes led but to more rural villages, farms and manor-houses. Notting Barns was a farmhouse on the site of Notting Hill. In the tea-gardens at Bayswater Sir John Hill cultivated medicinal plants, and prepared his "water-dock essence" and "balm of honey." Invalids frequented Kensington Gravel pits for the benefit of "the sweet country air."

Kensington Palace had been bought by William III. from Daniel Finch, second Earl of Nottingham. His father, the first Earl, had built and named the pile of brick-building Nottingham House. It was comparatively a new, trim house, though Evelyn called it "patched up" when it passed into the hands of King William, and as such might please his Dutch taste better than the beautiful Elizabethan Holland House—in spite of the name, at which he is said to have looked, with the intention of making it his residence.

The Duke of Sussex, as well as the Duke and Duchess of Kent, had apartments in the palace. He dwelt in the portion of the southern front understood to belong to the original building. His brother and sister-in-law were lodged not far off, but their apartments formed part of an addition made by King William, who employed Sir Christopher Wren as his architect.

The clumsy, homely structure, with its three courts—the Clock Court, the Princes' Court, and the Princesses' Court—had many interesting associations in addition to its air of venerable respectability. William and Mary resided frequently in the palace which they had chosen; and both died under its roof. Mary sat up in one of these rooms, on a dreary December night in 1694, after she felt herself stricken with small-pox, seeking out and burning all the papers in her possession which might compromise others. The silent, asthmatic, indomitable little man was carried back here after his fall from his horse eight years later, to draw his last breath where Mary had laid down her crown. Here Anne sat, with her fan in her mouth, speaking in monosyllables to her circle. George I.'s chief connection with Kensington Palace was building the cupola and the great staircase. But his successors, George II. and Queen Caroline, atoned for the deficiency. They gave much of their time to the palace so identified with the Protestant and Hanoverian line of succession. Queen Caroline especially showed her regard for the spot by exercising her taste in beautifying it according to the notions of the period. It was she who caused the string of ponds to be united so as to form the Serpentine; and he modified the Dutch style of the gardens, abolishing the clipped monsters in yew and box, and introducing wildernesses and groves to relieve the stiffness and monotony of straight walks and hedges. The shades of her beautiful maids of honour, "sweet Molly Lepell," Mary Bellenden, and Sophy Howe, still haunt the Broad Walk. Molly Lepell's husband, Lord Hervey (the "Lord Fanny" of lampoons and songs), composed and read in these rooms, for the diversion of his royal mistress and the princesses, with their ladies and gentlemen, the false account of his own death, caused by an encounter with footpads on the dangerous road between London and the country palace. He added an audacious description of the manner in which the news was received at Court, and of the behaviour of the principal persons in the circle.

With George II. and Queen Caroline the first glory of the palace departed, for the early Court of George III. and Queen Charlotte took its country pleasures at Kew. Then followed the selection of Windsor for the chief residence of the sovereigns. The promenades in the gardens, to which the great world of London flocked, remained for a season as a vestige of former grandeur. In George II.'s time the gardens were only thrown open on Saturdays, when the Court went to Richmond. Afterwards the public were admitted every day, under certain restrictions. So late as 1820 these promenades were still a feature on Sunday mornings.

Kensington Palace has not yet changed its outward aspect. It still stands, with its forcing-houses, and Queen Anne's banqueting-room— converted into an orangery—in its small private grounds, fenced off by a slight railing and an occasional hedge from the public gardens. The principal entrance, under the clock-tower, leads to a plain, square, red courtyard, which has a curious foreign aspect in its quiet simplicity, as if the Brunswick princes had brought a bit of Germany along with them when they came to reign here; and there are other red courtyards, equally unpretentious, with more or less old-fashioned doors and windows. Within, the building has sustained many alterations. Since it ceased to be a seat of the Court, the palace has furnished residences for various members of the royal family, and for different officials. Accordingly, the interior has been divided and partitioned off to suit the requirements of separate households. But the great staircase, imposing in its broad, shallow steps of black marble and its faded frescoes, still conducts to a succession of dismantled Presence-chambers and State-rooms. The pictures and tapestry have been taken from the walls, the old panelling is bare. The distinctions which remain are the fine proportions of the apartments— the marble pillars and niches of one; the remains of a richly-carved chimneypiece in another; the highly-wrought ceilings, to which ancient history and allegory have supplied grandiose figures—their deep colours unfaded, the ruddy burnish of their gilding as splendid as ever. Here and there great black-and-gold court-stools, raised at the sides, and finished off with bullet heads of dogs, arouse a recollection of Versailles or Fontainebleau, and look as if they had offered seats to Court ladies in hoops and brocades, and gentlemen-in-waiting in velvet coats and breeches and lace cravats. One seat is more capacious than the others, with a round back, and in its heavy black-and-gold has the look of an informal throne. It might easily have borne the gallant William, or even the extensive proportions of Anne.

There is a word dropped of "old kings" having died in the closed rooms behind these doors. George II., in his old age? or William, worn out in his prime? or it may be heavy, pacific George of Denmark, raised to the kingly rank by the courtesy of vague tradition? The old chapel was in this part of the house. Leigh Hunt tells us it was in this chapel George I. asked the bishops to have good short sermons, because he was an old man, and when he was kept long, he fell asleep and caught cold. It must have been a curious old chapel, with a round window admitting scanty light. The household and servants sat below, while a winding staircase led round and up to a closed gallery in near proximity to the pulpit. It was only a man's conscience, or a sense of what was due to his physical well-being, which could convict him of slumbering in such a peaceful retreat. It is said that her late Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent objected to the obscurity of this place of worship, and, to meet her objections, the present little chapel was fitted up.

The Duchess of Kent's rooms were in an adjacent wing; spacious rooms enough, and only looking the more habitable and comfortable for the moderate height of the ceilings. In a room with three windows on one side, looking out on the private grounds, the Queen was born. It was thinking of it and its occupants that the warm-hearted, quick-witted Duchess-mother, in Coburg, wrote: "I cannot express how happy I am to know you, dearest, dearest Vickel, safe in your bed, with a little one…. Again a Charlotte—destined, perhaps, to play a great part one day, if a brother is not born to take it out of her hands. The English like queens; and the niece (by marriage) of the ever-lamented, beloved Charlotte, will be most dear to them."

In another wide, low room, with white pillars, some eighteen years later, the baby Princess, become a maiden Queen, held her first Council, surrounded by kindred who had stood at her font—hoary heads wise in statecraft, great prelates, great lawyers, a great soldier, and she an innocent girl at their head. No relic could leave such an impression as this room, with its wonderfully pathetic scene. But, indeed, there are few other traces of the life that budded into dawning womanhood here, which will be always linked with the memories of Kensington Palace. An upper room, sunny and cheerful, even on a winter's day, having a pleasant view out on the open gardens, with their straight walks and great pond, where a child might forget sometimes that she had lessons to learn, was a princess's school-room. Here the good Baroness who played the part of governess so sagaciously and faithfully may have slipped into the book of history the genealogical table which was to tell so startling a tale. In another room is a quaint little doll's-house, with the different rooms, which an active-minded child loved to arrange. The small frying-pans and plates still hang above the kitchen dresser; the cook stands unwearied by the range; the chairs are placed round the tables; the tiny tea-service, which tiny fingers delighted to handle, is set out ready for company. But the owner has long done with make-believes, has worked in earnest, discharged great tasks, and borne the burden and heat of the day, in reigning over a great empire.

CHAPTER II CHILDHOOD.

In the months of March and May, 1819, the following announcements of royal births appeared in succession in the newspapers of the day, no doubt to the satisfaction alike of anxious statesmen and village politicians beginning to grow anxious over the chances of the succession:—

"At Hanover, March 26, her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge, of a son; and on March 27, her Royal Highness the Duchess of Clarence, of a daughter, the latter only surviving a few hours."

"24th May, at Kensington Palace, her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent, of a daughter."

"27th May, at her hotel in Berlin, her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cumberland, of a son."

Thus her Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria first saw the light in Kensington Palace on the 24th of May, 1819, one in a group of cousins, all, save herself, born out of England.

The Duke of Sussex, the Duke of Wellington, and other officers of State were in attendance on the occasion, though the probability of her succession to the throne was then very doubtful. The Prince Regent had already made overtures towards procuring a divorce from the Princess of Wales. If he were to revive them, and prove successful, he might marry again and have heirs. The Duchess of Clarence, who had just given birth to an infant that had only survived a few hours, might yet be the joyful mother of living children. The little Princess herself might be the predecessor of a troop of princes of the Kent branch. Still, both at Kensington and in the depths of rural Coburg, there was a little flutter, not only of gladness, but of subdued expectation. The Duke of Kent, on showing his baby to his friends, was wont to say, "Look at her well, for she will be Queen of England." Her christening was therefore an event of more than ordinary importance in the household. The ceremony took place a month afterwards, on the 24th of June, and doubtless the good German nurse, Madame Siebold, who was about to return to the Duchess of Kent's old home to officiate on an equally interesting occasion in the family of the Duchess's brother, the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, carried with her flaming accounts of the splendour of the ceremonial, as well as pretty tales of the "dear little love" destined to mate with the coming baby, whose big blue eyes were soon looking about in the lovely little hunting-seat of Rosenau. The gold font was brought down from the Tower, where for some time it had been out of request. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London officiated, as they had done the year before at the re-marriage of the Duke and Duchess. The godfathers were the Prince Regent, present in person, and Alexander, Emperor of Russia, then at the height of his popularity in England, represented by the Duke of York. The godmothers were the Queen-dowager of Wurtemberg (the Princess Royal), represented by Princess Augusta, and the Duchess-dowager of Coburg (mother of the Duchess of Kent, and grandmother of both the Queen and the Prince Consort), represented by the Duchess of Gloucester (Princess Mary).

It is said there had been a proposal to name the little princess Georgiana also, after her grandfather and uncle, George III. and George, Prince Regent; but the idea was dropped because the latter would not permit his name to stand second on the list.

Among the other privileged guests at the christening was Prince Leopold, destined to be the child's second father, one of her kindest and wisest friends. It is not difficult to comprehend what the scene must have been to the young man whose cup had been so full two years before, who was how a widower and childless. We have his own reference to his feelings in a letter to one of the late Princess Charlotte's friends. It had been hard for him to be present, but he had felt it to be his duty, and he had made the effort. This was a man who was always facing what was hard, always struggling and overcoming in the name of right. The consequence was that, even in his youth, all connected with him turned to him as to a natural stay. We have a still better idea of what the victory cost him when we read, in the "Life of the Prince Consort," it was not till a great misfortune happened to her that Prince Leopold "had the courage to look into the blooming face of his infant niece." With what manly pity and tenderness he overcame his reluctance, and how he was rewarded, we all know.

In December, 1819, the Duke and Duchess of Kent went for sea-air to
Woolbrook Cottage, Sidmouth, Devonshire.

The first baby is always of consequence in a household, but of how much consequence this baby was may be gleaned by the circumstance that a startling little incident concerning the child made sufficient mark to survive and be registered by a future chronicler. A boy shooting sparrows fired unwittingly so near the house that the shot shattered one of the windows of the nursery, and passed close to the head of the child in the nurse's arms. Precious baby-head, that was one day to wear, with honour, a venerable crown, to be thus lightly threatened at the very outset! One can fancy the terror of the nurse, the distress of the Duchess, the fright and ire of the Duke, the horror and humiliation of the unhappy offender, with the gradual cooling down into magnanimous amnesty—or at most dignified rebuke, mollified by penitent tears into reassuring kindness, and just a little quiver of half-affronted, half-nervous laughter.

But there was no more room for laughter at false alarms at Woolbrook Cottage. Within a month the Duke was seized with the illness which ended his life in a few days. The particulars are simple and touching. He had taken a long walk with his equerry and great friend, Captain Conroy, and came in heated, tired, and with his feet so wet that his companion suggested the propriety of immediately changing his boots. But the baby of whom he was so fond and proud came in his way. She was eight months old, able to stretch out her little arms and laugh back to him. He stayed to play with her. In the evening it was evident he had caught a chill; he was hoarse, and showed symptoms of fever. The complaint settled at once on his lungs, and ran its course with great rapidity. We hardly need to be told that the Duchess was his devoted nurse, concealing her anxiety and grief to minister to him in everything.

There is a pathetic little reference to the last illness of the Duke of Kent in one of the Princess Hohenlohe's letters to the Queen. This elder sister (Princess Feodora of Leiningen) was then a little girl of nine or ten years of age, residing with her mother and stepfather. "Indeed, I well remember that dreadful time at Sidmouth. I recollect praying on my knees that God would not let your dear father die. I loved him dearly; he always was so kind to me."

On the afternoon of the 22nd his case was hopeless, and it became a question whether he had sufficient consciousness to sign his will. His old friend, General Wetherall, was brought up to the bed. At the sound of the familiar voice which had always been welcome to him, the sick man, drifting away from all familiar sounds, raised himself, collected his thoughts for the last time, and mentioned several places and people intelligently. The poor Duke had never been negligent in doing what he saw to be his duty. He had been forward in helping others, even when they were not of his flesh and blood. He heard the will read over, and with a great effort wrote the word "Edward," looking at every letter after he wrote it, and asking anxiously if the signature was legible.

In this will, which left the Duchess guardian to the child, and appointed General Wetherall and Captain Conroy trustees of his estate for the benefit of his widow and daughter, it is noticeable that the name in each case is given in the French version, "Victoire." Indeed so rare was the term in England at this date, that it is probable the English equivalent had scarcely been used before the christening of the Queen.

The Duke died on the following day, the 23rd of January, 1820. Only six days later, on the 29th, good old King George expired at Windsor. The son was cut down by violent disease while yet a man in middle life, just after he had become the head of a little household full of domestic promise, and with what might still have been a great public career opening out before him. The father sank in what was, in his case, the merciful decay of age, after he had been unable for ten years to fulfil the duties and charities of life, and after surviving his faithful Queen a year. The language of the official announcement of the physicians was unusually appropriate: "It has pleased the Almighty to release his Majesty from all further suffering." To complete the disasters of the royal family this month, the new King, George IV., who had been labouring under a cold when his father died, was seized immediately after his proclamation with dangerous inflammation of the lungs, the illness that had proved fatal to the Duke of Kent, and could not be present at his brother's or father's funerals; in fact, he was in a precarious state for some days.

The Duke of Kent was buried, according to the custom of the time, by torchlight, on the night of the 12th of February, at Windsor. As an example of the difference which distance made then, it took nearly a week's dreary travelling to convey the Duke's body from Woolbrook Cottage, where it lay in State for some days, to Cumberland Lodge, from which the funeral train walked to Windsor. The procession of mourning-coaches, hearse, and carriages set out from Sidmouth on Monday morning, halting on successive nights at Bridport, Blandford, Salisbury, and Basingstoke, the coffin being deposited in the principal church of each town, under a military guard, till on Friday night Cumberland Lodge was reached. The same night a detachment of the Royal Horse Guards, every third man bearing a flambeau, escorted a carriage containing the urn with the heart to St. George's Chapel, where in the presence of the Dean, the officers of the chapel, and several gentlemen appointed for the duty, urn and heart were deposited in the niche in which the coffin was afterwards to be placed. The body lay in State on the following day, that it might be seen by the inhabitants of Windsor, his old military friends, and the multitude who came down from London for the two mournful ceremonies. At eight o'clock at night the final procession was formed, consisting of Poor Knights, pages, pursuivants, heralds, the coronet on a black velvet cushion, the body under pall and canopy, the supporters of the pall and canopy field-marshals and generals, the chief mourner the Duke of York, the Dukes of Clarence, Sussex, Gloucester, and Prince Leopold in long black cloaks, their trains borne by gentlemen in attendance.

These torchlight funeral processions formed a singular remnant of mediaeval pageantry. How the natural solemnity of night in itself increased the awe and sadness of the scene to all simple minds, we can well understand. Children far away from Windsor remembered after they were grown men and women the vague terror with which they had listened in the dim lamplight of their nurseries to the dismal tolling of the bell out in the invisible church tower, which proclaimed that a royal duke was being carried to his last resting-place. We can easily believe that thousands would flock to look and listen, and be thrilled by the imposing spectacle. The show must have been weirdly picturesque when wild wintry weather, as in this case, added to the effect, "viewed for the distance of three miles, through the spacious Long Walk, amidst a double row of lofty trees, whilst at intervals the glittering of the flambeaux and the sound of martial music were distinctly seen and heard."

The Duke's funeral only anticipated by a few days the still more magnificent ceremonial with which a king was laid in the tomb.

But the real mourning was down in Devonshire, in the Sidmouth cottage. It would be difficult to conceive more trying circumstances for a woman in her station than those in which the young Duchess—she was but little over thirty—found herself left. She had lost a kind husband, her child would miss a doting father. She was a foreigner in a strange country. She had entered into a divided family, with which her connection was in a measure broken by the death of the Duke, while the bond that remained, however precious to all, was too likely to prove a bone of contention. The Duke had died poor. The Duchess had previously relinquished her German jointure, and the English settlement on her was inadequate, especially if it were to be cumbered with the discharge of any of her husband's personal debts. It was not realised then that the Duchess of Kent, in marrying the Duke and becoming his widow and the guardian of their child, had given up not only independence, but what was affluence in her own country, with its modest ways of living—even where princes were concerned—for the mortification and worry of narrow means, the strain of a heavy responsibility, the pain of much unjustifiable and undeserved interference, misconception, and censure, until she lived to vindicate the good sense, good feeling, and good taste with which she had always acted.

But the Duchess was not altogether desolate. Prince Leopold hurried to her and supported her then, and on many another hard day, by brotherly kindness, sympathy, and generous help. It was in his company that she came back with her child to Kensington.

One element of the Coburg character has been described as the sound judgment and quiet reasonableness associated with the temperate blood of the race. Accordingly, we find the Duchess not only submitting with gentle resignation to misfortune, but rousing herself, as her brother might have done in her circumstances—as doubtless he urged her to do—to the active discharge of the duties of her position. On the 23rd of February, before the first month of her widowhood was well by, she received Viscount Morpeth and Viscount Clive, the deputation bearing to her the address of condolence from the House of Commons. She met them with the infant Princess in her arms. The child was not only the sign that she fully appreciated and acknowledged the nature of the tie which united her to the country, it was the intimation of the close inseparable union with her daughter which continued through all the years of the Queen's childhood and youth, till the office of sovereign forced its holder into a separate existence; till she found another fitting protector, when the generous, ungrudging mother gave way to the worthy husband, who became the dutiful, affectionate son of the Duchess's declining years.

Five months after these events the Duchess, at her own request, had an interview with William Wilberforce, then living in the house at Kensington Gore which was occupied later by the Countess of Blessington and Count D'Orsay. "She received me," the good man wrote to Hannah More, "with her fine, animated child on the floor by her side, with its playthings, of which I soon became one. She was very civil, but, as she did not sit down, I did not think it right to stop above a quarter of an hour; and there being but a female attendant and a footman present, I could not well get up any topic so as to carry on a continual discourse. She apologised for not speaking English well enough to talk it; intimated a hope that she might talk it better and longer with me at some future time. She spoke of her situation, and her manner was quite delightful."

The sentence in italics opens our eyes to one of the difficulties of the Duchess to which we might not otherwise have given much consideration. We are apt to take it for granted that, though there is no royal road to mathematics, the power of speaking foreign languages comes to royal personages, if not by nature, at least by inheritance and by force of circumstances. There is some truth in this when there is a foreign father or mother; when royal babies are brought up, like Queen Victoria, to speak several languages from infancy, and when constant contact with foreigners confirms and maintains the useful faculty. Even when a prince or a princess is destined from his or her early youth to share a foreign throne, and is brought up with that end, a provision may be made for an adopted tongue to become second nature. But the Duchess of Kent was not brought up with any such prospect, and during her eleven years of married life in Germany she must have had comparatively little occasion to practise what English she knew; while, at the date of her coming to England, she was beyond the age when one learns a new language with facility. Any one of us who has experienced the fettered, perturbed, bewildered condition which results from being reduced to express ourselves at an important crisis in our history through a medium of speech with which we are but imperfectly acquainted, will know how to estimate this unthought-of obstacle in the Duchess of Kent's path, at the beginning of her widowhood.

This was the year (1820) of the greatest eclipse of the sun which had been seen for more than a century, when Venus and Mars were both visible, with the naked eye, for a few minutes in the middle of the day. Whatever the portents in the sky might mean, the signs on the earth were not reassuring. When the Bourbon monarchy had seemed fairly restored in France, all the world was shocked by the assassination of the Duc de Berri at the door of the Opera-house in Paris. Three kingdoms which had but recently been delivered from the clutch of the usurper were in revolt against the constituted authorities—Portugal, Spain, and Naples. Of these, the two former were on the brink of wars of succession, when the royal uncles, Don Miguel and Don Carlos, fought against their royal nieces, Donna Maria and Donna Isabella. At home the summer had been a sad one to the royal family and the country. The ferment of discontent was kept up by the very measures—executions and imprisonments—taken to repress anarchy, and by the continuance of crushed trade, want of work, and high prices. The Duchess of York died, making the third member of the royal family dead since the new year; yet she, poor lady, was but a unit in the sum, a single foreign princess who, however, kind she might have been to the few who came near her, was nothing to the mass of the people.

The name of another foreign princess was in every man's mind and on every man's tongue. However, there were many reasons for the anomaly. Caroline of Brunswick was the Queen until she should be proved unworthy to bear the title. Her quarrel with the King had long made her notorious. Though the story reflected little credit on her, it was so utterly discreditable to him that it raised up friends for her where they might have been least expected. His unpopularity rendered her popular. Her name became the rallying-cry for a great political faction. The mob, with its usual headlong, unreasoning appropriation of a cause and a person, elevated her into a heroine, cheered frantically, and was ready to commit any outbreak in her honour.

After six years' absence from England Queen Caroline had come back on the death of George III. to demand her rights. She had landed at Dover and been welcomed by applauding crowds. She had been escorted through Kent by uproarious partisans, who removed the horses from her carriage and dragged her in triumph through the towns. London, in its middle and lower classes, had poured out to meet her and come back in her train, till she was safely lodged in South Audley Street, in the house of her champion, Alderman Wood.

The King had instructed his ministers to lay before the House of Lords a bill of Pains and Penalties against the Queen which, if sustained, would deprive her of every claim to share his rank and would annul the marriage. The Queen was prepared with her defence, and furnished with two of the ablest advocates in the kingdom, Mr. Brougham and Mr. Denman. In the earlier stages of the proceedings she was present almost every day in the House of Lords. She entered in her puce or black sarcenet pelisse and black velvet hat, a large, not uncomely woman, a little over fifty, and took the chair of State provided for her, the House rising to receive the Queen whom it was trying. The trial, in its miserable details of gross folly well-nigh incredible, lasted from July to November—four months of burning excitement—when it collapsed from the smallness of the majority (nine) that voted for the second reading of the bill. The animus of the prosecution and the unworthy means taken to accomplish its purpose, defeated the end in view. It is said that had it been otherwise the country would have broken out into widespread insurrection.

The Queen's supporters, of all classes, sects, and shades, indulged in a perfect frenzy of rejoicing. Festivals, illuminations, every token of triumph for her and condemnation for him accompanied what was equivalent to her acquittal. She went in something like State, with her queer, motley household—Bohemian, English and Italians—and her great ally, Alderman Wood, to offer up thanksgiving in St. Paul's, where, at the same time, she found her name omitted from the Church service. She wore white velvet and ermine, and was surrounded by thousands of shouting followers, as if she had been the most discreet of queens and best of women. The poor passionate, wayward nature, which after all had been cruelly dealt with, was touched as well as elated.

On the very day after Queen Caroline's arrival in London in June, she had dispatched Alderman Wood to Kensington, to condole with the Duchess of Kent on her recent widowhood, and inquire after the health of the infant princess. The message was innocent in itself, but alarming by implication; for Queen Caroline was not a woman to be kept at a distance, or to hesitate in expressing her sentiments if she fancied her overtures slighted by the embarrassed Duchess. In the month of August Queen Caroline had established herself at Brandenburg House—the Margravine of Anspach's house, by the river at Hammersmith—near enough to Kensington Palace, to judge from human nature, to disconcert and provoke a smile against the smiler's will—for Caroline's extravagances would have disturbed the gravity of a judge—in the womanly Princess at the head of the little household soberly settled there. Never were princesses and women more unlike than Caroline of Brunswick and Victoria of Coburg; But poor Queen Caroline was not destined to remain long an awkward enigma—a queen and yet no queen, an aunt and yet no aunt, a scandal and a torment in everybody's path.

In the summer of the following year, when the country was drawn away and dazzled by the magnificent ceremonial of the coronation of George IV., she exercised her last disturbing influence. She demanded to be crowned along with her husband; but her demand was refused by the Privy Council. She appeared at the door of Westminster Abbey, but the way was barred to her. A fortnight afterwards, when King George had gone to Ireland to arouse the nation's loyalty, his wife had passed where Privy Council ushers and yeomen of the guard were powerless, where the enmity of man had no voice in the judgment of God. She had been attacked by severe illness, and in the course of five days she died, in the middle of a wild storm of thunder, wind, and rain. The night before, a boatful of Methodists had rowed up the Thames, within sound of the open windows of her sick-room, and sung hymns to comfort her in her extremity. The heart of a large part of the nation still clung to her because of her misfortunes and the insults heaped upon her. The late Queen's body was conveyed back to Brunswick. The funeral passed through Kensington, escorted by a mighty mob, in addition to companies of soldiers. The last were instructed to conduct the cortege by the outskirts of London to Harwich, where a frigate and two sloops of war were waiting for the coffin. The mob were resolute that their Queen's funeral should pass through the city. The first struggle between the crowd and the military took place at the corner of Church Street, Kensington. The strange, unseemly, contention was renewed farther on more than once; but as bloodshed had been forbidden, the people had their way, and the swaying mass surged in grim determination straight towards the Strand and Temple Bar. The captain of the frigate into whose keeping the coffin was committed in order to be conveyed back to Brunswick had been, by a curious, sorrowful coincidence, the midshipman who, "more than a quarter of a century before, handed the rope to the royal bride whereby to help her on board the Jupiter," which was to bring her to England.

One can fancy that, when that sorry tragedy was ended, and its perpetual noisy ebullitions had sunk into silence, a sense of relief stole over the palace-home at Kensington.

Round the childhood and youth of sovereigns, especially popular sovereigns, a growth of stories will gather like the myths which attend on the infancy of a nation. Such stories or myths are chiefly valuable as showing the later tendency of the individual or people, the character and history of the monarch or of the subjects, in accordance with which, in reversal of the adage that makes the child father to the man, the man is, in a new sense, father to the child, by stamping on his infancy and nonage traits borrowed from his mature years. Mingled with the species of legendary lore attaching to every generation, there is a foundation more or less of authentic annals. It is as affording an example of this human patchwork of fancy and fact, and as illustrating the impression deeply engraved on the popular mind, that the following incidents of the Queen's childhood and youth are given.

First, the people have loved to dwell on the close union between mother and child. The Duchess nursed her baby—would see it washed and dressed. As soon as the little creature could sit alone, her small table was placed by her mother's at meals, though the child was only allowed the food fit for her years. The Princess slept in her mother's room all through her childhood and girlhood. In the entries in the Queen's diary at the time of the Duchess of Kent's death, her Majesty refers to an old repeater striking every quarter of an hour in the sick-room on the last night of the Duchess's life—"a large watch in a tortoiseshell case, which had belonged to my poor father, the sound of which brought back to me all the recollections of my childhood, for I had always used to hear it at night, but had not heard it for now twenty-three years."

When the Princess was a little older, and lessons and play alternated with each other, she was taught to attend to the thing in hand, and finish what she had begun, both in her studies and games. One day she was amusing herself making a little haycock when some other mimic occupation caught her volatile fancy, and she flung down her small rake ready to rush off to the fresh attraction. "No, no, Princess; you must always complete what you have commenced," said her governess, and the small haymaker had to conclude her haymaking before she was at liberty to follow another pursuit.

From the Princess's fifth year Dr. Davys, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough, was her tutor. When it became clear that the little girl would, if she lived, be Queen of England, a prelate high in the Church was proposed to the Duchess of Kent as the successor of Dr. Davys in his office. But the Duchess, with the mild firmness and conscientious fidelity which ruled her conduct, declared that as she was perfectly satisfied with the tutor who had originally been appointed (when the appointment was less calculated to offer temptations to personal ambition and political intrigue), she did not see that any change was advisable. If a clergyman of higher rank was necessary, there was room for the promotion of Dr. Davys. Accordingly he was named Dean of Chester.

The Baroness Lehzen was another of the Queen's earliest guardians who remained at her post throughout her Majesty's youth. Louise Lehzen, daughter of a Hanoverian clergyman, came to England as governess to Princess Feodora Leiningen and remained as governess to Princess Victoria, entering on her duties in 1824. In 1827 she was raised to the rank of a Hanoverian Baroness, by George IV., at the request of Princess Sophia. From that time Baroness Lehzen acted also as lady in attendance. On her death, so late as 1870, her old pupil recorded of her, in a passage in the Queen's journal, which is given in the "Life of the Prince Consort," "My dearest, kindest friend, old Lehzen, expired on the 9th quite gently and peaceably…. She knew me from six months old, and from my fifth to my eighteenth year devoted all her care and energies to me with the most wonderful abnegation of self, never even taking one day's holiday. I adored, though I was greatly in awe of her. She really seemed to have no thought but for me…. She was in her eighty-seventh year." This constancy and permanency in the family relations were in themselves inestimable boons to the child, who thus grew up in an atmosphere of familiar affection and unshaken trust, for the absence of which nothing in the world could have compensated. Another lady of higher rank was of necessity appointed governess to the Queen in 1831, when she became next heir to the throne. This lady, the Dowager Duchess of Northumberland, appears also as the Queen's friend in after life.

The late Bishop Wilberforce was told by Dr. Davys an interesting anecdote of his former pupil. "The Queen always had from my first knowing her a most striking regard to truth. I remember when I had been teaching her one day, she was very impatient for the lesson to be over—once or twice rather refractory. The Duchess of Kent came in, and asked how she had behaved. Lehzen said, 'Oh, once she was rather troublesome.' The Princess touched her and said, 'No, Lehzen, twice, don't you remember?' The Duchess of Kent, too, was a woman of great truth."

It had been judged meet that the future Queen should not be made aware of her coming greatness, which, for that matter, continued doubtful in her earlier years. She was to grow up free from the impending care and responsibility, happy and healthful in her unconscious girlhood—above all, unassailed by the pernicious attempts to bespeak her favour, the crafty flattery, the undermining insinuations which have proved the bane of the youth of so many sovereigns. In order to preserve this reticence, unslumbering care and many precautions were absolutely necessary. It is said the Princess was constantly under the eye either of the Duchess of Kent or the Baroness Lehzen. The guard proved sufficient; yet it was difficult to evade the lively intelligence of an observant sensible child.

"Why do all the gentlemen take off their hats to me and not to my sister Feodora?" the little girl is said to have asked wonderingly on her return from a drive in the park, referring to her elder half-sister, who became Princess of Hohenlohe, between whom and the questioner there always existed the strong sweet affection of true sisters. Perhaps the little lady felt indignant as well as mystified at the strange preference thus given to her, in spite of her sister's superiority in age and wisdom. We do not know what reply was made to this puzzling inquiry, though it would have been easy enough to say that the little Princess was the daughter of an English royal Duke, therefore an English Princess, and the big Princess was German on both sides of the house, while these were English gentlemen who had saluted their young countrywoman. We all know from the best authority that Sir Walter Scott was wrong when he fancied some bird of the air must have conveyed the important secret to the little fair-haired maiden to whom he was presented in 1828. The mystery was not disclosed for years to come.

The child, though brought up in retirement, was by no means secluded from observation, or deprived of the change and variety so advantageous to human growth and development. From her babyhood in the sad visit to Sidmouth in 1820, and from 1821, when she was at that pretentious combination of fantasticalness and gorgeousness, the Pavilion, Brighton, she was carried every year, like any other well-cared-for child, either to the seaside or to some other invigorating region, so that she became betimes acquainted with different aspects of sea and shore in her island. Ramsgate was a favourite resort of the Duchess's. The little Thanet watering-place, with its white chalk cliffs, its inland basin of a harbour, its upper and lower town, connected by "Jacob's Ladder," its pure air and sparkling water, with only a tiny fringe of bathing-machines, was in its blooming time of fresh rural peace and beauty when it was the cradle by the sea of the little Princess.

When she was five she was at Claremont, making music and motion in the quiet house with her gleeful laughter and pattering feet, so happy in being with her uncle that she could look back on this visit as the brightest of her early holidays. "This place," the Queen wrote to the King of the Belgians long afterwards, "has a peculiar charm for us both, and to me it brings back recollections of the happiest days of my otherwise dull childhood,—when I experienced such kindness from you, dearest uncle, kindness which has ever since continued…. Victoria plays with my old bricks, and I see her running and jumping in the flower-garden, as old, though I feel still little, Victoria of former days used to do." In the autumn of 1825 the Queen's grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Coburg, visited England, and the whole family were together at Claremont.

In 1826, "the warm summer," when the Princess was seven years of age, she was invited to Windsor to see another uncle, George IV. That was a more formidable ordeal, but her innocent frank brightness carried her through it successfully. It is not easy for many men to contemplate with satisfaction their heirs, when those heirs are no offspring of theirs. It must have been doubly difficult for the King to welcome the little girl who had replaced his daughter, the child of his wronged brother and of a Princess whom King George persistently slighted and deprived of her due. But we are told his Majesty was delighted with his little niece's liveliness and intelligence.

In the following year, 1827, the Duke of York died, and the Princess, was a step nearer to the throne, but she did not know it. So far from being reared in an atmosphere of self-indulgence, the invaluable lesson was early taught to her that if she were to be honourable and independent in any rank, she must not buy what she could not pay for; if she were to be a good woman she must learn to deny herself. An incident in illustration, which made a small stir in its locality at the time, is often quoted. The Duchess and her daughter were at Tunbridge Wells, dwelling in the neighbourhood of Sir Philip Sidney's Penshurst, retracing the vanished glories of the Pantiles, and conferring on the old pump-woman the never-to-be-forgotten honour of being permitted to present a glass of water from the marble basin to the Princess. The little girl made purchases at the bazaar, buying presents, like any other young visitor, for her absent friends, when she found her money all spent, and at the same time saw a box which would suit an absent cousin. "The shop-people of course placed the box with the other purchases, but the little lady's governess admonished them by saying, 'No. You see the Princess has not got the money; therefore, of course, she cannot buy the box.'" This being perceived, the next offer was to lay by the box till it could be purchased, and the answer was, "Oh, well, if you will be so good as to do that." On quarter-day, before seven in the morning, the Princess appeared on her donkey to claim her purchase.

In the reverence, peace, and love of her pure, refined, if saddened home, everything went well with Princess Victoria, of whom we can only tell that we know the old brick palace where she dwelt, the playground that was hers, the walks she must have taken. We have sat in the later chapel where she said her prayers, a little consecrated room with high pews shutting in the worshippers, a royal gallery, open this time, and an elderly gentleman speaking with a measured, melodious voice. We can guess with tolerable certainty what was the Princess's child-world of books, though from the circumstance that in the light of the future she was made to learn more than was usual then for English girls of the highest rank, she had less time than her companions for reading books which were not study, but the most charming blending of instruction and amusement. That was still the age of Mrs. Barbauld and Miss Edgeworth. "Evenings at Home," "Harry and Lucy," and "Frank and Rosamond," were in every well-conducted school-room. All little girls read with prickings of tender consciences about the lady with the bent bonnet and the scar on her hand, and came under the fascination of the "Purple Jar." A few years later, Harriet Martineau's bristling independence did not prevent her from feeling gratified by the persuasion that the young Princess was reading through her tales on political economy, and that Princess Victoria's favourite character was Ella of the far north.

In the Princess's Roman history one day she came to the passage where the noble matron, Cornelia, in answer to a question as to her precious things, pointed to her sons, and declared, "These are my jewels." "Why," cried the ready-witted little pupil, with a twinkle in her blue eyes, "they must have been cornelians."

When the Princess's lessons took the form of later English history, she was on the very spot for the study. Did her teacher tell her, we wonder, the pretty story of "Bucky," who interrupted grave, saturnine King William at his statescraft in one of yonder rooms? How the small dauntless applicant wiled his father's master, great Louis's rival, into playing at horses in the corridor? Or that sadder story of another less fortunate boy, poor heavy-headed William of Gloucester? Tutors crammed and doctors shook him up, with the best intentions, in vain. In his happier moments he drilled his regiment of little soldiers on that Palace Green before his uncle, King William.

Was the childish passion for exploring old garrets and lumber-rooms excited in this royal little woman by the narrative of the wonderful discovery which Queen Caroline had made in a forgotten bureau in this very palace? Did the little Princess roam about too, in her privileged moments, with a grand vision of finding more and greater art-treasures, other drawings by Holbein or Vandyke, fresh cartoons by Raphael?

All the more valuable paintings had been removed long ago to Windsor, but many curious pictures still remained on the walls of presence chambers and galleries, kings' and queens' great dining-rooms and drawing-rooms, staircases and closets. Did the pictures serve as illustrations to the history lessons? Was the inspection made the recreation of rainy days, when the great suites of State-rooms in which Courts were no longer held or banquets celebrated, but which still echoed with the remembered tread of kings' and courtiers' feet, must have appeared doubly deserted and forlorn?

What was known as the King's Great Drawing-room was not far from the Duchess of Kent's rooms, and was, in fact, put at her disposal in its dismantled, ghostly condition. Among its pictures—freely attributed to many schools and masters—including several battle-pieces and many portraits, there were three representations of English palaces: old Greenwich, where Elizabeth was born; old Hampton, dear to William and Mary; and Windsor, the Windsor of George III. and Queen Charlotte, the Princess's grandfather and grandmother. In the next room, amidst classic and scriptural subjects, and endless examples of "ladies with ruffs," "heads in turbans," &c., there were occasionally family portraits—the old King and Queen more than once; William, Duke of Gloucester; the Queen of Wurtemberg as the girl-Princess Royal, with a dog. (She died in Wurtemberg about this time, 1828. She had quitted England on her marriage in 1797, and in the thirty-one years of her married life only once came back, as an aging and ailing woman. She proved a good wife and stepmother.) A youthful family group of an earlier generation was sure to attract a child—George III. and his brother, Edward, Duke of York, when young, shooting at a target, the Duke of Gloucester in petticoats, Princess Augusta (Duchess of Brunswick, and mother of Caroline, Princess of Wales) nursing the Duke of Cumberland, and Princess Louisa sitting in a chaise drawn by a favourite dog, the scene in Kew Gardens, painted in 1746. Queen Elizabeth was there as a child aged seven, A.D. 1540—three-quarters, with a feather-fan in her hand. Did the guide of the little unconscious Princess pause inadvertently, with a little catch of the breath, by words arrested on the tip of the tongue, before that picture? And was he or she inevitably arrested again before another picture of Queen Elizabeth in her prime, returning from her palace, wearing her crown and holding the sceptre and the globe; Juno, Pallas, and Venus flying before her, Juno dropping her sceptre, Venus her roses, and the little boy Cupid flinging away his bow and arrows, and clinging in discomfiture to his mother because good Queen Bess had conquered all the three in power, wisdom, and beauty? We know the Princess must have loved to look at the pictures. More curious than beautiful as they were, they may have been sufficient to foster in her that love of art which has been the delight of the Queen's maturer years.

English princesses, even though they were not queens in perspective, were not so plentiful in Queen Victoria's young days as to leave any doubt of their hands and hearts proving in great request when the proper time came. Therefore there was no necessity to hold before the little girl, as an incentive to good penmanship, the example of her excellent grandmother, Queen Charlotte, who wrote so fair a letter, expressed with such correctness and judiciousness, at the early age of fifteen, that when the said letter fell, by an extraordinary train of circumstances, into the hands of young King George, he determined there and then to make that painstaking and sensible Princess, and no other, a happy wife and great Queen. There was no strict need for the story, and yet as a gentle stimulant it may have been administered.

Queen Victoria was educated, as far as possible, in the simple habits and familiarity with nature which belongs to the best and happiest training of any child, whatever her rank. There is a pleasant picture in Knight's "Passages of a Working Life": "I delighted to walk in Kensington Gardens in the early summer, on my way to town…. In such a season, when the sun was scarcely high enough to have dried up the dews of Kensington's green alleys, as I passed along the broad central walk I saw a group on the lawn before the palace, which, to my mind, was a vision of exquisite loveliness. The Duchess of Kent and her daughter, whose years then numbered nine, are breakfasting in the open air, a single page attending on them at a respectful distance, the mother looking on with eyes of love, while the fair, soft, English face is bright with smiles. The world of fashion is not yet astir. Clerks and mechanics passing onwards to their occupations are few, and they exhibit nothing of vulgar curiosity."

We have another charming description, by Leigh Hunt, of a glimpse which he had of Princess Victoria in these gardens: "We remember well the peculiar kind of personal pleasure which it gave us to see the future Queen, the first time we ever did see her, coming up a cross-path from the Bayswater Gate, with a girl of her own age by her side, whose hand she was holding as if she loved her. It brought to our minds the warmth of our own juvenile friendships, and made us fancy that she loved everything else that we had loved in like measure—books, trees, verses, Arabian tales, and the good mother who had helped to make her so affectionate. A magnificent footman in scarlet came behind her, with the splendidest pair of calves, in white stockings, that we ever beheld. He looked somehow like a gigantic fairy, personating for his little lady's sake the grandest kind of footman he could think of; and his calves he seemed to have made out of a couple of the biggest chaise-lamps in the possession of the godmother of Cinderella. With or without her big footman, the little Princess could have rambled safely in the grounds which her predecessors had made for her, could have fed the ducks which swam in the round pond before her palace windows, could have drunk from the curious little mineral well, where, in Miss Thackeray's 'Old Kensington,' Frank Raban met Dolly Vanburgh, or peeped out of the little side gate where the same Dolly came face to face with the culprits George and Rhoda. The future owner of all could have easily strayed down the alleys among the Dutch elms which King William brought, perhaps saplings, from the Boomjees, as far as the oak that tradition says King Charles set in the form of an acorn taken from his leafy refuge at Boscobel."

The Duke of Kent had brought an old soldier-servant, called Stillman, and established him, with his wife and family, in a cottage in one of the Kensington lanes. It is said the Duke had recommended this former retainer to the care of the Duchess, and that she and her daughter were in the habit of visiting and caring for the family, in which there were a sickly little boy and girl.

An event happened in 1828 to the household in Kensington Palace which was of importance to all. It was a joyful event, and the preparations for the royal wedding, with the gala in which the preliminaries culminated, must have formed an era in the quiet young life into which a startling announcement and its fulfilment had broken, filling the hours of the short winter days with wonder, admiration, and interest.

Yet all the pleasant stir and excitement; the new member of the family prominent for a brief space; the gifts, the trousseau, the wedding-cake, the wedding guests, were but the deceptive herald of change and loss to the family, whose members were so few that each became deeply precious. The closely united circle was to be broken, and a dear face permanently withdrawn from the group. The Duchess of Kent's elder daughter, Princess Victoria's only sister, was about to marry. It was the most natural and the happiest course, above all when the Princess Feodora wedded worthily—how worthily let the subsequent testimony of the Queen and the Prince Consort prove. It was given at the time of the Prince of Hohenlohe's death, thirty-two years afterwards, in 1860.

The Queen wrote to her own and her sister's uncle, the King of the Belgians, in reference to the Prince of Hohenlohe: "A better, more thoroughly straightforward, upright, and excellent man, with a more unblemished character, or a more really devoted and faithful husband, never existed."

The Prince Consort's opinion of his brother-in-law is to be found in a letter to the Princess William of Prussia: "Poor Ernest Hohenlohe is a great loss. Though he was not a man of great powers of mind, capable of taking comprehensive views of the world, still he was a great character —that is to say, a thoroughly good, noble, spotless, and honourable man, which in these days forms a better title to be recognised as great than do craftiness, Machiavellism, and grasping ambition."

At the time of his marriage the Prince of Hohenlohe was in the prime of manhood, thirty-two years of age.

But the marriage meant the Princess Feodora's return to Germany and her separation from the other members of her family, with the exception of her brother, brought up in his own country. The bride, whom we hear of afterwards as a true and tender woman, was then a sweet maiden of twenty, whose absence must have made a great blank to her mother and sister. Happily for the latter, she was too young to realise in the agreeable excitement of the moment what a deprivation remained in store for her. There were eleven years between the sisters. This was enough difference to mingle a motherly, protecting element with the elder sister's pride and fondness, and to lead the younger, whose fortunes were so much higher, but who was unaware of the fact, to look up with affectionate faith and trust to the grown-up companion, in one sense on a level with the child, in another with so much more knowledge and independence.

It was a German marriage, both bride and bridegroom being German, though the bride had been nine years—the difference between a child and a woman—in England, and though the event occurred in an English household. Whether the myrtle was worn for the orange-blossoms, or any of the other pretty German wedding customs imported, we cannot tell. Anyhow, the ordinary peaceful simplicity of the palace was replaced by much bustle and grandeur on that February morning, the modest forerunner of another February morning in another palace, when a young Queen plighted her troth.

The royal family in England, with two exceptions, were at Kensington Palace to do honour to the marriage. The absent members were the King and Princess Augusta—the latter of whom was at Brighton. The company arrived soon after two o'clock, and consisted of the Duke and Duchess of Clarence, the Duke of Sussex, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Princess Sophia, the Princess Sophia Matilda of Gloucester, and Prince Leopold.

At three o'clock the party walked in procession to the great saloon adjoining the vestibule, in which a temporary altar had been fitted up. The bride was given away by the Duke of Clarence. The ceremony was performed in the simple Lutheran fashion by a simple Lutheran pastor, Dr. Kuper, "the chaplain of the Royal German Chapel."

Then came the parting, and the quiet palace-home was stiller and shadier than ever, when the gracious maidenly presence had gone, when the opening rose was plucked from the parent stem, and only the bud left.

In 1830 George IV. died, and William, Duke of Clarence, succeeded to the throne as King William IV. That summer was the last of the Princess's ignorance of her prospects; until then not even the shadow of a throne had been projected across the sunshiny path of the happy girl of eleven. She was with her mother in one of the fairest scenes in England—Malvern. The little town with its old Priory among the Worcester hills, looks down on the plain of Worcester, the field of a great English battle.

A dim recollection of the Duchess and the Princess is still preserved at Malvern—how pleasant and kind they were to all, how good to the poor; how the future Queen rode on a donkey like any other young girl at Malvern—like poor Marie Antoinette in the forest glades of Compiegne and Fontainebleau half a century earlier, when she was only four years older, although already Dauphiness of France. The shadowy records do not tell us much more; we are left to form our own conclusions whether the Queen anticipated her later ascents of Scotch and Swiss mountains by juvenile scrambles amongst the Worcester hills; whether she stood on the top of the Worcester or Hereford Beacon; or whether these were considered too dangerous and masculine exploits for a princess of tender years, growing up to inherit a throne? She could hardly fail to enter the Wytche, the strange natural gap between Worcestershire and Herefordshire, by which, at one step, the wayfarer leaves wooded England behind, and stands face to face with a pastoral corner of Wales; or to drive along the mile-long common of Barnard's Green, with the geese, and the hay-stacks, and the little cottages on either side, and always in front the steep ridge of hills with the grey Priory where Piers Plowman saw his vision, nestling at their feet; or to pull the heather and the wild strawberries in Cowleigh Park, from which every vestige of its great house has departed. She might have been a privileged visitor at Madresfield, where some say Charles II. slept the night before the battle of Worcester, and where there is a relic that would better become Kensington, in a quilt which Queen Anne and Duchess Sarah embroidered together in silks in the days of their fast friendship.

As it was part of the Princess's good education to be enlightened, as far as possible, with regard to the how and why of arts and manufactures, we make no question she was carried to Worcester, not only to see the cathedral, but to have the potteries exhibited to her. There was a great deal for the ingenuous mind of a royal pupil to see, learn, and enjoy in Worcester and Warwickshire—for she was also at Guy's Cliff and Kenilworth.

It had become clear to the world without that the succession rested with the Duke of Kent's daughter. Long before, the Duchess of Clarence had written to her sister-in-law in a tender, generous struggle with her sorrow: "My children are dead, but yours lives, and she is mine too." As the direct heir to the crown, the Princess Victoria became a person of great importance, a source of serious consideration alike to the Government and to her future subjects. The result, in 1830, was a well-deserved if somewhat long-delayed testimony to the merits of the Duchess of Kent, which must have given honest satisfaction not only at Kensington, but at Claremont—to whose master the Belgian Revolution was opening up the prospect of a kingdom more stable than that of Greece, for which Prince Leopold had been mentioned. Away in the Duchess's native Coburg, too, the congratulations were sincere and hearty.

The English Parliament had not only formally recognised the Princess as the next heir and increased the Duchess's income to ten thousand a year, so relieving her from some of her difficulties; it had, with express and flattering reference to the admirable manner in which she had until then discharged the trust that her husband had confided to her, appointed her Regent in the event of King William's death while the Princess was still a minor. In this appointment the Duchess was preferred to the Duke of Cumberland. He had become the next royal Duke in the order of descent, but had failed to inspire confidence in his countrymen. In fact he was in England the most uniformly and universally unpopular of all George III.'s sons. There was even a wild rumour that he was seeking, against right and reason, to form a party which should attempt to revive the Salic law and aim at setting aside the Princess and placing Prince George of Cumberland on the throne of England as well as on that of Hanover.

The Princess had reached the age of twelve, and it was judged advisable, after her position had been thus acknowledged, that she herself should be made acquainted with it. The story—the authenticity of which is established beyond question—is preserved in a letter from the Queen's former governess, Baroness Lehzen, which her Majesty has, given to the world.

"I ask your Majesty's leave to cite some remarkable words of your Majesty when only twelve years old, while the Regency Bill was in progress. I then said to the Duchess of Kent, that now, for the first time, your Majesty ought to know your place in the succession. Her Royal Highness agreed with me, and I put the genealogical table into the historical book. When Mr. Davys (the Queen's instructor, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough) was gone, the Princess Victoria opened the book again, as usual, and seeing the additional paper, said, 'I never saw that before.' 'It was not thought necessary you should, Princess,' I answered. 'I see I am nearer the throne than I thought.' 'So it is, madam,' I said. After some moments the Princess answered, 'Now, many a child would boast, but they don't know the difficulty. There is much splendour, but there is more responsibility.' The Princess having lifted up the forefinger of her right hand while she spoke, gave me that little hand, saying, 'I will be good. I understand now why you urged me so much to learn even Latin. My aunts Augusta and Mary never did; but you told me Latin is the foundation of English grammar and of all the elegant expressions, and I learned it as you wished it, but I understand all better now;' and the Princess gave me her hand, repeating, 'I will be good.' I then said, 'But your aunt Adelaide is still young, and may have children, and of course they would ascend the throne after their father, William IV., and not you, Princess.' The Princess answered, 'And if it was so, I should never feel disappointed, for I know by the love aunt Adelaide bears me how fond she is of children.'"

No words can illustrate better what is striking and touching in this episode than those with which Mrs. Oliphant refers to it in her sketch of the Queen. "It is seldom that an early scene like this stands out so distinctly in the early story even of a life destined to greatness. The hush of awe upon the child; the childish application of this great secret to the abstruse study of Latin, which was not required from the others; the immediate resolution, so simple, yet containing all the wisest sage could have counselled, or the greatest hero vowed,' I will be good,' makes a perfect little picture. It is the clearest appearance of the future Queen in her own person that we get through the soft obscurity of those childish years." The Duchess of Kent remained far from a rich woman for her station, and the young Princess had been sooner told of her mother's straitened income than of the great inheritance in store for herself. She continued to be brought up in unassuming, inexpensive habits.

In February, 1831, when Princess Victoria was twelve, she made her first appearance in state at "the most magnificent Drawing-room which, had been seen since that which had taken place on the presentation of Princess Charlotte of Wales upon the occasion of her marriage." The Drawing-room was held by Queen Adelaide, and it was to do honour to the new Queen no less than to commemorate the approaching completion of the Princess's twelfth year that the heiress to the throne was present in a prominent position, an object of the greatest interest to the splendid company. She came along with the Duchess her mother, attended by an appropriate suite, including the Duchess of Northumberland, Lady Charlotte St. Maur, Lady Catherine Parkinson, the Hon. Mrs. Cust, the Baroness Lehzen, and the Princess's father's old friends, General Wetherall and Captain (now Sir John) Conroy, with his wife, Lady Conroy. The Princess's dress was made, as the Queen's often was afterwards, entirely of articles manufactured in the United Kingdom. She wore a frock of English blonde, "simple, modest, and becoming." She stood on the left of her Majesty on the throne, and "contemplated all that passed with much dignity, but with evident interest." We are further told, what we can well believe, that she excited general admiration as well as interest. We can without difficulty call up before us the girlish figure in its pure, white dress, the soft, open face, the fair hair, the candid blue eyes, the frank lips slightly apart, showing the white pearly teeth. The intelligent observation, the remarkable absence of self-consciousness and consequent power of self-control and of thought for others, which struck all who approached her in the great crisis of her history six years afterwards, were already conspicuous in the young girl. No doubt it was for her advantage, in consideration of what lay before her, that while brought up in wholesome privacy, she was at the same time inured, so far, to appear in public, to bear the brunt of many eyes—some critical, though for the most part kind—touched by her youth and innocence, by the circumstance that she was fatherless, and by the crown she must one day wear. She had to learn to conduct herself with the mingled self-respect and ease which became her station. Impulsiveness, shyness, nervousness, are more serious defects in kings and queens than in ordinary mortals. To use a homely phrase, "to have all their wits about them" is very necessary in their case. If in addition they can have all their hearts—hearts warm and considerate, nobly mindful of their own obligations and of the claims of others—so much the better for the sovereigns and for all who come under their influence. A certain amount of familiarity with being the observed of all observers, with treading alone a conspicuous path demanding great circumspection, was wanted beforehand, in order that the young head might remain steady in the time of sudden, tremendous elevation.

Nevertheless, the Princess was not present at the coronation of King William and Queen Adelaide, and her absence, as the heir-presumptive to the throne, caused much remark and speculation, and gave rise to not a few newspaper paragraphs. Various causes were assigned for the singular omission. The Times openly accused the Duchess of Kent of proving the obstacle. Other newspapers followed suit, asserting that the grounds for the Duchess's refusal were to be found in the circumstance that in the coronation procession, marshalled by Lord A. Fitzclarence, the place appointed for the Princess Victoria, instead of being next to the King and Queen, according to her right, was after the remaining members of the royal family. Conflicting authorities declared that the Prime Minister, Earl Grey, for some occult reason, opposed the Princess's receiving an invitation to be present at a ceremony which had so much interest for her; or that the Duchess of Northumberland, the governess of the Princess, took the same extraordinary course from political motives. Finally, The Globe gave, on authority, an explanation that had been offered all along in the midst of more sensational rumours. The Princess's health was rather delicate, and the Duchess of Kent had, on that account, got the King's sanction to her daughter's not being exposed to unusual excitement and fatigue. The statement on authority was unanswerable, but while it stilled one cause of apprehension it awakened another. After the untimely death of Princess Charlotte, the nation was particularly sensitive with regard to the health of the heir to the crown. Whispers began to spread abroad, happily without much foundation, of pale cheeks, and a constitution unfit for the burden which was to be laid upon it.

CHAPTER III. YOUTH.

In the month of August, 1831, the Princess went with her mother to profit by the soft, sweet breezes of the Isle of Wight. The Duchess and her daughter occupied Norris Castle for three months, and the ladies of the family were often on the shore watching the white sails and chatting with the sailors. Carisbrooke and King Charles the Martyr were brought more vividly home to his descendant, with the pathetic little tale of the girl-Princess Elizabeth. We do not know whether the Queen then learnt to feel a special love for the fair little island with which she has long been familiar, but of this we are certain, that she could then have had little idea that her chief home would be within its bounds. Even in 1831 transport and communication by land and water continued a tedious and troublesome business. However, the visit to the Isle of Wight was repeated in 1833. Perhaps to dissipate the gossip and calm the little irritation which had been created by the Princess's absence from the coronation, she made her appearance twice in public, on the completion of her thirteenth year, in 1832. That was a year in which there was much call for oil to be cast on the troubled waters: never since 1819, the date of the Queen's birth had there been greater restlessness and turmoil throughout the country. For some time public feeling had been kept at the boiling-point by the question of the Reform Bill—groaned over by some as the first step to democracy and destruction; eagerly hailed by others as a new dawn of freedom, peace, and prosperity. The delay in passing the Bill had rendered the King unpopular, and brought unmerited blame on Queen Adelaide, for having gone beyond her prerogative in lending herself to overthrow the King's Whig principles. The ferment had converted the old enthusiastic homage to the Iron Duke as a soldier into fierce detestation of him as a statesman. The carrying of the measure on which the people had set their hearts did not immediately allay the tempest—a disappointing result, which was inevitable when the universal panacea failed to work at once like a charm in relieving all the woes in the kingdom. Men were not only rude, and spoke their minds, the ringleaders broke out again into riots, the most formidable and alarming of which were those in Bristol, that left a deep impression on more than one chance spectator who witnessed them. But the girl Princess—praised for her proficiency in Horace and Virgil, and her progress in mathematics—could only hear far off the mutterings of the storm that was passing; and King William and Queen Adelaide sought to put aside what was perplexing and harassing them; and tried to forget that when they had shown themselves to their people lately they had been met—here with indifference—and there with hootings. The times were waxing more and more evil, as it seemed, to uneasy, vexed wearers of crowns, unlike those in which old King George and Queen Charlotte had been received with fervent acclamation wherever they went, whatever wars were being waged or taxes imposed. The manners of the Commons were not improving with the extension of their rights. But the King and Queen would do their duty, which was far from disagreeable to them, in paying proper respect to their niece and successor. Accordingly their Majesties gave a ball on the Princess's thirteenth birthday, 24th May, 1832, at which the heroine of the day figured; and four days later, on the 28th of May, she was present for the second time at a Drawing-room.

All the same, it is an open secret that William, living, for the most part, in that noblest palace of Windsor, considered the Princess led too retired a life, so far as not appearing often enough at his Court was concerned, and that he complained of her absence and resented it as a slight to himself. It is an equally well-established fact that, in spite of the King's kindness of heart and Queen Adelaide's goodness, King William's Court was not in all respects a desirable place for a Princess to grow up in, in addition to the objection that any Court in itself formed an unsuitable schoolroom for a young girl.

It is doubtful, since even the most magnanimous men have jealous instincts, whether the King's displeasure on one point would be appeased by what was otherwise a very natural and judicious step taken by the Duchess of Kent this year. She made an autumn tour with her daughter through several counties of England and Wales, in the course of which the royal mother and daughter paid a succession of visits to seats of different noblemen, taking Oxford on the way. If there was a place in England which deserved the notice of its future Queen, it was one of the two great universities—the cradles of learning, and, in the case of "the most loyal city of Oxford," the bulwark of the throne. The party proceeded early in October through the beautiful scenery of North Wales—the Princess's first experience of mountains—to Eaton Hall, the home of the Grosvenor family. From Eaton the travellers drove to the ancient city of Chester, with its quaint arcades and double streets, its God's Providence House and its cathedral. At Chester the Princess named the new bridge which was opened on the occasion. By the wise moderation and self-repression of those around her, the name bestowed was not the "Victoria," but simply the "Grosvenor Bridge."

From Eaton the Princess was taken to Chatsworth, the magnificent seat of the Cavendishes. She stayed long enough to see and hear something of romantic Derbyshire. She visited Hardwick, associated with Building Bess, whose granddaughter, the unfortunate "Lady Arbell," had been a remote cousin of this happy young Princess, and she went, like everybody else, to Matlock. At Belper the party, in diligent search after all legitimate knowledge, examined the great cotton-mills of the Messrs. Strutt, and the senior partner had the honour of showing to her Royal Highness, by means of a model, how cotton was spun.

From Chatsworth the Duchess and her daughter repaired to Alton Abbey, where the "Talbot tykes" still kept watch and ward; thence to Shugborough, the seat of the Earl of Lichfield, which enabled the visitors to see another fine cathedral and to breathe the air which is full of "the great Dr. Johnson."

At each of the towns the strangers were met by addresses—of course made to the Duchess and replied to by her. How original these formal compliments must have sounded to Princess Victoria! On the 27th of October their Royal Highnesses were at Pitchford Hall, the residence of the Earl of Liverpool, from which they visited Shrewsbury—another Chester—with a word of its own for the old fateful battle in which "Percy was slain and Douglas taken prisoner," and the Welsh power broken in Owen Glendower. After getting a glimpse of the most picturesque portion of Shropshire, halting at more noble seats, and passing through a succession of Worcester towns, the royal party reached Woodstock on the 7th of November, and the same evening rested at Wytham House, belonging to the Earl of Abingdon. There was hardly time to realise that the memories of Alice Lee, the old knight Sir Henry, and the faithful dog Bevis, rivalled successfully the grisly story of Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamond. Nay, the magician was still dogging the travellers' steps; for had he not made the little town of Abingdon his own by choosing it for the meeting-place of Mike Lambourne and Tressillian, and rebuilding in its neighbourhood the ruins of Cumnor Hall, on which the dews fell softly? Alas! the wizard would weave no more spells. A month before that princely "progress" Sir Walter Scott, after Herculean labours to pay his debts like an honest man had wrecked even his robust frame and healthful genius, lay dead at Abbotsford.

On the 8th of November the future Queen entered Oxford with something like State, in proper form escorted by a detachment of Yeomanry. There is no need to tell that she was received by the Vice-Chancellor of the University, and the dons and doctors of the various colleges, in full array. And she was told of former royal visitors: of Charles in his tribulation; of her grandfather and grandmother, King George and Queen Charlotte, when little Miss Barney was there to describe the festivities. The Princess went the usual round: to superb Christ Church, at which her sons were to graduate; to the Bodleian and Radclyffe libraries; to All Souls, New College, &c. She proceeded to view other buildings, which, unless in a local guide-book, are not usually included among the lions of Oxford. But this young lady of the land was bound to encourage town as well as gown; therefore she visited duly the Town Hall and Council Chamber. From Oxford the tourists returned to Kensington.

There are no greater contrasts than those which are to be found in royal lives. When the Princess Victoria was about to set out on her pleasant journey in peace and prosperity, the news came of the arrest of the Duchesse de Berri, at Nantes. It was the sequel to her gallant but unsuccessful attempt to raise La Vendee in the name of her young son, Henri de Bordeaux, and the end to the months in which she had lain in hiding. She was discovered in the chimney of a house in the Rue Haute-du-Chateau, where she was concealed with three other conspirators against the Government of her cousin, Louis Philippe. The search had lasted for several hours, during which these unfortunate persons were penned in a small space and exposed to almost intolerable heat. A mantelpiece had been contrived so as to turn on a swivel and form an opening into a suffocating recess. When the Duchesse and her companions were found their hands were scorched and part of their clothes burnt. She was taken to the fortress of Nantes, and thence transferred to the Castle of Blaze, where she suffered a term of imprisonment. She had acted entirely on her own responsibility, her wild enterprise having being disapproved alike by her father-in-law, Charles X., and her brother and sister-in-law, the Duc and Duchesse d'Angouleme.

In 1833, we are told, the Duchess of Kent and the fourteen years old Princess stopped on their way to Weymouth—the old favourite watering-place of King George and Queen Charlotte—and visited the young Queen of Portugal, at Portsmouth. Donna Maria da Gloria had been sent from Brazil to England by her father, Don Pedro, partly for her safety, partly under the impression, which proved false, that the English Government would take an active part in her cause against the usurpation of her uncle, Don Miguel. The Government did nothing. The royal family paid the stranger some courtly and kindly attentions. One of the least exceptional passages in the late Charles Greville's Memoirs is the description of the ball given by the King, at which the two young queens—to be—were present. The chronicle describes the girls, who were of an age—having been born in the same year: the sensible face of the fair-haired English Princess, and the extreme dignity—especially after she had sustained an accidental fall—of the Portuguese royal maiden, inured to the hot sun of the tropics. Don Miguel was routed in the course of the following year (1834), and his niece was established in her kingdom. Within the same twelve months she lost a father and gained and lost a husband; for among the first news that reached her English acquaintances was her marriage, before she was sixteen, and her widowhood within three months. She had married, in January, the Duc de Leuchtenberg, a brother of her stepmother and a son of Eugene Beauharnais. He died, after a short illness, in the following March. She married again in the next year, her re-marriage having been earnestly desired by her subjects. The second husband was Prince Ferdinand of Coburg, belonging to the Roman Catholic branch of the Coburgs, and cousin both to the Queen and the Prince Consort. He was a worthy and, ultimately, a popular prince. Donna Maria was grand-niece to Queen Amelie of France, and showed much attachment to the house of Orleans. There is said to have been a project formed by Louis Philippe, which was frustrated by the English Government, that she should marry one of his sons, the Duc de Nemours.

In addition to the English tours which the Princess Victoria made with her mother, the Duchess of Kent was careful that as soon as her daughter had grown old enough to profit by the association, she should meet the most distinguished men of the day—whether statesmen, travellers, men of science, letters, or art. Kensington had one well-known intellectual centre in Holland House, presided over by the famous Lady Holland, and was soon to have another in Gore House, occupied by Lady Blessington and Count D'Orsay; but even if the fourteen years old Princess had been of sufficient age and had gone into society, such salons were not for her. The Duchess must "entertain" for her daughter. In 1833 Lord Campbell mentions dining at Kensington Palace. The company found the Princess in the drawing-room on their arrival, and again on their return from the dining-room. He records her bright, pleasant intelligence, perfect manners, and happy liveliness.

In July, 1834, when the Princess was fifteen, she was confirmed in the Chapel Royal, St. James's, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in the presence of the King and Queen and the Duchess of Kent. She was advancing with rapid steps to the point at which the girl leaves the child for ever behind her, and stretches forward to her crown of young womanhood. She had in her own name confirmed the baptismal vow which consecrated her as a responsible being to the service of the King of kings. Still she was a young creature, suffered to grow up according to a gracious natural growth, not forced into premature expansion, permitted to preserve to the last the sweet girlish trust and confidence, the mingled coyness and fearlessness, pensive dreams and merry laughter, which constitute the ineffable freshness and tender grace of youth.

If the earlier story of the purchase, or non-purchase, of the box at Tunbridge Wells reads "like an incident out of 'Sandford and Merton,'" there is another anecdote fitting into this time which has still more of the good-fairy ring in it, while it sounds like a general endorsement of youthful wisdom. Yet it may have had its origin in some eager, youthful fancy of astonishing another girl, and giving her "the very thing she wanted" as a reward for her exemplary behaviour. The Princess was visiting a jeweller's shop incognito (a little in the fashion of Haroun-al-Raschid) when she saw another young lady hang long over some gold chains, lay down reluctantly the one which she evidently preferred, and at last content herself with buying a cheaper chain. The interested on-looker waited till the purchaser was gone, made some inquiries, directed that both chains should be tied up and sent together, along with the Princess Victoria's card, on which a few words were pencilled to the effect that the Princess had been pleased to see prudence prevail, while she desired the young lady to accept her original choice, in the hope that she would always persevere in her laudable self-denial.

In the autumn of 1835 the Duchess of Kent and the Princess went as far north as York, visiting the Archbishop at Bishopsthorpe, studying the minster—second only to Westminster among English abbeys—and gracing with the presence of royalty the great York Musical Festival. On the travellers' homeward route they were the guests of the Earl of Harewood, at Harewood House, Earl Fitzwilliam at Wentworth, and the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir. At Burghley House the Duchess and the Princess visited the Marquis of Exeter. The late Charles Greville met them there, and gives a few particulars of their visit. "They arrived from Belvoir at three o'clock, in a heavy rain, the civic authorities having turned out at Stamford to escort them and a procession of different people, all very loyal. When they had lunched, and the Mayor and his brethren had got dry, the Duchess received the Address, which was read by Lord Exeter, as Recorder. It talked of the Princess as 'destined to mount the throne of these realms.' Conroy handed the answer just as the Prime Minister does to the King. They are splendidly lodged, and great preparations have been made for their reception. The dinner at Burghley was very handsome; hall well lit, and all went off well, except that a pail of ice was landed in the Duchess's lap, which made a great bustle. Three hundred people at the ball, which was opened by Lord Exeter and the Princess, who, after dancing one dance, went to bed. They appeared at breakfast next morning at nine o'clock, and at ten set off to Holkham."

Romance was not much in Mr. Greville's way, but Burghley, apart from the statesman Cecil and his weighty nod, had been the scene of such a romance as might well have captivated the imagination of a young princess, though its heroine was but a village maiden—she who married the landscape-painter, and was brought by him to Burghley, bidden look around at its splendour, and told

"All of this is thine and mine."

Tennyson has sung it—how she grew a noble lady, and yet died of the honour to which she was not born, and how the Lord of Burghley, deeply mourning, bid her attendants

"Bring the dress and put it on her
Which she wore when we were wed."

In one of those autumns which the Duchess of Kent and her daughter spent at Ramsgate—not so rural as it had been a dozen years before, but still a quiet enough retreat—they received a visit from the King and Queen of the Belgians. Prince Leopold was securely established on the throne which he filled so well and so long, keeping it when many other European sovereigns were unseated. He was accompanied by his second wife, Princess Louise of France, daughter of Louis Philippe. She was a good woman, like all the daughters of Queen Amelie, while Princess Marie, in addition to goodness, had the perilous gift of genius. The following is Baron Stockmar's opinion of the Queen of the Belgians. "From the moment that the (Queen Louise) entered that circle in which I for so many years have had a place, I have revered her as a pattern of her sex. We say and believe that men can be noble and good; of her we know with certainty that she was so. We saw in her daily a truthfulness, a faithful fulfilment of duty, which makes us believe in the possible though but seldom evident nobleness of the human heart. In characters such as the Queen's, I see a guarantee of the perfection of the Being who has created human nature." We ought to add that Stockmar had not only the highest opinion of the character of Queen Louise, but also of her insight and judgment, and he often expressed his opinion that if anything were to happen to King Leopold the Regency might be entrusted to the Queen with perfect confidence.

How much the Queen valued Queen Louise, how she became Queen Victoria's dearest friend, is fully shown at a later date by the extracts from the Queen's journal, and letters in the "Life of the Prince Consort"

About this time the Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria paid a visit to the Duke of Wellington at Walmer Castle—the old tower with fruit-trees growing in the dry moat, and a slip from the weeping-willow which hung over the grave in St. Helena flourishing in its garden, where the Warden of the Cinque Ports could look across the roadstead of the Downs and count the ships' masts like trees in a forest, and watch the waves breaking twenty feet high on the Goodwin Sands. "The cut-throat town of Deal" which poor Lucy Hutchinson so abhorred, pranked its quaint red houses for so illustrious and dainty a visitor. The Duke had stood by her font, and if he had "no small talk," he was a courteous gentleman and gentle warrior when he fought his battles over again for the benefit of the young Princess.

A winter was spent by the Duchess and the Princess at St. Leonard's, not far from Battle Abbey, where the last Saxon king of England bit the dust, and William of Normandy fought and won the great battle which rendered his invasion a conquest.

1836 was an eventful year in the Queen's life. We read that the Duchess of Kent and her daughter remained at Kensington till the month of September. There was a good reason for staying at home in the early summer. The family entertained friends: not merely valued, kinsfolk, but visitors who might change the whole current of a life's history and deeply influence a destiny on which the hopes of many hearts were fixed, that concerned the well-being of millions of the human race. Princess Victoria had not grown up solitary in her high estate. It has been already pointed out that she was one in a group of cousins with whom she had cordial relations. But the time was drawing near when nature and policy alike pointed to the advisability of forming a closer tie, which would provide the Princess with companionship and support stretching beyond those of her mother, and, if it were well and wisely chosen, afford the people further assurance that the first household in the kingdom should be such as they could revere. The royal maiden who had been educated so wisely and grown up so simply and healthfully, was approaching her seventeenth birthday. Already there were suitors in store for her hand; as many as six had been seriously thought of—among them, Prince Alexander of the Netherlands, whose suit was greatly favoured by King William; Duke Ernest of Wurtemberg; Prince Adalbert of Prussia; and Prince George of Cambridge. Prince George of Cumberland was hors de combat, apart from the Duke of Cumberland's pretensions and the alienation caused by them. Prince George, when a baby, had lost the sight of one eye, a misfortune which his father shared. A few years later in the son's boyhood, as he was at play in the gardens of Windsor Castle, he began to amuse himself with flinging into the air and catching a long silk purse with heavy gold tassels, when the purse fell on the seeing eye, inflicting such an injury as to threaten him with total blindness. The last catastrophe was brought about by the blunder of a famous German oculist after Prince George had become Crown Prince of Hanover.

How much the Princess knew or guessed of those matrimonial prospects, how far they fluttered her innocent heart, we cannot tell; but as of all the candidates mentioned there was only one with whom she had any acquaintance to speak of, it may be supposed that the generality of the proposed wooers passed like vague shadows before her imagination.

In the meantime the devoted friends of her whole life had naturally not left this question—the most important of all—entirely unapproached. Her English cousins stood to her somewhat in the room of contemporary brothers and sisters; for her own brother and sister, however united to her in affection, were removed from her by age, by other ties, and by residence in a foreign country, to which in 1833 there was still no highway well trodden by the feet of kings and queens and their heirs-presumptive, as well as by meaner people, such as we find to-day. But there were other cousins of whom much had been said and heard, though they had remained unseen and personally unknown. For that very reason they were more capable of being idealised and surrounded by a halo of romance.

At the little ducal Court of Coburg there was the perfect young prince of all knightly legends and lays, whom fate seemed to have mated with his English cousin from their births within a few months of each other. When he was a charming baby of three years the common nurse of the pair would talk to him of his little far-away royal bride. The common grandmother of the two, a wise and witty old lady, dwelt fondly on the future union of her youngest charge with the "Mayflower" across the seas.

In all human probability these grandmotherly predictions would have come to nothing had it not been for a more potent arbiter of the fortunes of his family. King Leopold had once filled the very post which was now vacant, for which there were so many eager aspirants. None could know as he knew the manifold and difficult requirements for the office; none could care as he cared that it should be worthily filled. His interest in England had never wavered, though he had renounced his English annuity of fifty thousand a year on his accession to the throne of Belgium. He was deeply attached to the niece who stood nearly in the same position which Princess Charlotte had occupied twenty years before. Away in Coburg there was a princely lad whom he loved as a son, and who held the precise relation to the ducal house which he himself had once filled. What was there to hinder King Leopold from following out the comparison? Who could blame him for seeking to rebuild, in the interest of all, the fair edifice of love and happiness and loyal service which had been shattered before the dawn of those lives—that were like the lives of his children—had arisen? Besides, look where he might, and study character and chances with whatever forethought, he could not find such another promising bridegroom for the future Queen of England. Young, handsome, clever, good, endowed with all winning attributes; with wise, well-balanced judgment in advance of his years; with earnest, steadfast purpose, gentle, sympathetic temper, and merry humour.

King Leopold's instinct was not at fault, as the result proved; but it was not without the most careful consideration and many anxious consultations, especially with his trusty old friend, Baron Stockmar, that the King allowed himself to take the initiatory step in the matter. If the young couple were to love and wed it was certainly necessary that they should meet, that "the favourable impression" might be made, as the two honourable conspirators put it delicately. For this there was no more time to be lost, when so many suitors had already entered the lists, and the maiden only wanted a year of the time fixed for her majority. But with conscientious heedfulness for the feelings of the youthful pair, and for their power of forming separately an unbiassed opinion, it was settled that when an opportunity of becoming acquainted should be given them, the underlying motive must be kept secret from the Princess as well as the Prince, that they might be "perfectly at their ease with each other." This secrecy could not, however, extinguish the previous knowledge which the Prince at least possessed, that a marriage between the cousins had been mooted by some of those most interested in their welfare.

In spite of the obstacles which King William raised, an invitation was sent by the Duchess of Kent to her brother, the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg, to pay her a visit, accompanied by his two sons, in the spring of 1836. Accordingly, in the month which is the sweetest of the year, in spite of inconstant skies and chill east winds, when Kensington Gardens were bowery and fair with the tender green foliage—the chestnut and hawthorn blossoms—the lilac and laburnum plumes of early summer, the goodly company arrived, and made the old brick palace gay with the fresh and fitting gaiety of youth.

We may never know how the royal cousins met—whether the frank, kind, unconscious Princess came down under the wing of the Duchess as far as their entrance into the Clock Court; whether there was a little dimness of agitation and laughing confusion, in spite of the partial secrecy, in two pairs of blue eyes which then encountered each other for the first time; whether the courtly company ascended in well-arranged file, or in a little friendly disorder. It was fortunate that there were more doors and halls and staircases than one, for it goes without saying that nobody could have had time and attention to spare for the wonderfully elaborate staircase, the representation in chiaroscuro of horses and warlike weapons, the frieze with heads of unicorns and masks of lions. It must have been on another day that young heads looked up in jest or earnest at Hercules, Diana, Apollo, and Minerva, and stopped to pick out the heterogeneous figures in the colonnade—"ladies, yeomen of the guard, pages, a quaker, two Turks, a Highlander, and Peter the Wild Boy," which testified to the liberal imagination of Kent, who executed not only the architecture, but the painting, in the reign of George I.

The guests remained at Kensington for a month, the only drawback to their pleasure being a little attack of bilious fever, from which Prince Albert suffered for a few days. There is a published letter to his stepmother in which the Prince tells his doings in the most unaffected, kindly fashion. There were the King's levee, "long and fatiguing, but very interesting;" the dinner at Court, and the "beautiful concert" which followed, at which the guests had to stand till two o'clock; the King's birthday, with the Drawing-room at St. James's Palace, where three thousand eight hundred people passed before the King and Queen, and another great dinner and concert in the evening. There was also the "brilliant ball" at Kensington Palace, at which the gentlemen were in uniform and the ladies in fancy dresses. Duke William of Brunswick, the Prince of Orange and his sons, and the Duke of Wellington, were among the guests, and the Princes of Coburg helped to keep up the ball till four o'clock. They spent a day with the Duke of Northumberland at Sion House, they went to Claremont, and they were so constantly engaged that they had to make the most of their time in order to see at least some of the sights of London. To one of the sights the Queen referred afterwards. The Duke of Coburg and the two Princes accompanied the Duchess of Kent and the Princess to the wonderful gathering of the children of the different charity schools in St. Paul's Cathedral, where Prince Albert listened intently to the sermon. We hardly need to be told that he was full of interest in everything, paid the greatest attention to all he saw, and was constantly occupied. Among his pleasant occupations were the two favourite pursuits—which the cousins shared—music and drawing. He accompanied the Princess on the piano, and he drew with and for her. It was a happy, busy time, though some of the late dinners, at which, the Prince drank only water, were doubtless dull enough of the young people, and Prince Albert, accustomed to the early hours and simple habits of Germany, felt the change trying. He confessed that it was sometimes with the greatest difficulty he could keep awake. The Princess's birthday came round during her kinsman's visit. The Prince alluded to the event and to his stay at Kensington in writing to the Duchess of Kent three years later, when he was the proud and happy bridegroom of his cousin. He made no note of the date as having had an effect on their relations to each other, neither did he dwell on any good wish or gift [Footnote: Lady Bloomfield mentions among the Queen's rings "a small enamel with a tiny diamond in the centre, the Prince's gift when he first came to England, a lad of seventeen.">[ on his part; but in compliance with a motherly request from his aunt, the Duchess, that he would send her something he had worn, he returned to her a ring that she had given him on that May morning. The ring had never left his finger since then. The very shape proclaimed that it had been squeezed in the grasp of many a manly hand. The ring had her name upon it, but the name was "Victoria" too, and he begged her to wear it in remembrance of his bride and himself.

The favourable impression had been made in spite of the perversity of fortune and the vagaries of human hearts, which, amidst other casualties, might have led the Princess to accord her preference to the elder brother, Prince Ernest, who was also "a fine young fellow," though not so well suited to become prince-consort to the Queen of England. But for once destiny was propitious, and neither that nor any other mischance befell the bright prospects of the principal actors in the scene. When the King of the Belgians could no longer refrain from expressing his hopes, he had the most satisfactory answer from his royal niece.

"I have only now to beg you, my dearest uncle," she wrote, "to take care of the health of one now so dear to me, and to take him under your special protection. I hope and trust that all will now go on prosperously and well on this subject, now of so much importance to me."

At the same time, though an affectionate correspondence was started and maintained for a year, no further communication passed which could tend to enlighten the Prince as to the feelings he had excited. He went away to complete his education, to study diligently, along with his brother, at Brussels and Bonn; to feel in full the gladness of opening life and opening powers of no ordinary description; to rejoice, as few young men have the same warrant to rejoice, in the days of his unstained, noble youth.

On the King's birthday, the 21st August, the Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria were at Windsor Castle on a visit. In spite of some soreness over the old grievance, the King proposed the Princess Victoria's health very kindly at the dinner. After he had drunk the Princess Augusta's health he said, "And now, having given the health of the oldest I will give that of the youngest member of the royal family. I know the interest which the public feel about her, and although I have not seen so much of her as I could have wished, I take no less interest in her, and the more I do see of her, both in public and private, the greater pleasure it will give me." The whole thing was so civil and gracious that it could hardly be taken ill, but, says Greville, "the young Princess sat opposite and hung her head with not unnatural modesty at being thus talked of in so large a company."

In the September of that year the Duchess and the Princess went again to Ramsgate, and stayed there till December. It was their last visit to the quiet little resort within a short pilgrimage of Canterbury—the great English shrine, not so much of Thomas a Becket, slain before the altar, as of Edward the Black Prince, with his sword and gauntlets hung up for ever, and the inscription round the effigy which does not speak of Cressy and Poictiers, but of the vanity of human pride and ambition. It was the last seaside holiday which the mother and daughter spent together untrammelled by State obligations and momentous duties, with none to come between the two who had been all in all with each other. In their absence a storm of wind passed over London, and wrought great damage in Kensington Gardens. About a hundred and thirty of the larger trees were destroyed. In the forenoon of the 29th of November "a tremendous crash was heard in one of the plantations near the Black Pond, between Kensington Palace and the Mount Gate, and on several persons running to the spot twenty-five limes were found tumbled to the earth by a single blast, their roots reaching high into the air, with a great quantity of earth and turf adhering, while deep chasms of several yards in diameter showed the force with which they had been torn up…. On the Palace Green, Kensington, near the forcing-garden, two large elms and a very fine sycamore were also laid prostrate."

In the following summer (1837) the Princess came of age, as princesses do, at eighteen, and it was meet that the day should be celebrated with, all honour and gladness. But the rejoicings were damped by the manifestly failing health of the aged King, then seventy-one years of age. He had been attacked by hay fever—to which he had been liable every spring at an earlier period of his life, but the complaint was more formidable in the case of an old and infirm man, while he still struggled manfully to transact business and discharge the duties of his position. At the Levee and Drawing-room of the 21st May he sat while receiving the company. By the 24th he was confined to his rooms, and the Queen did not leave him.

At six o'clock in the morning the Union Jack was hoisted on the summit of the old church, Kensington, and on the flagstaff at Palace Green. In the last instance the national ensign was surmounted by a white silk flag on which was inscribed in sky-blue letters "Victoria." The little town adorned itself to the best of its ability. "From the houses of the principal inhabitants of the High Street were also displayed the Royal Standard, Union Jack, and other flags and colours, some of them of extraordinary dimensions." Soon after six o'clock the gates of Kensington Gardens were thrown open for the admission of the public to be present at the serenade which was to be performed at seven o'clock under the Palace windows, with the double purpose of awaking the Princess in the most agreeable manner, and of reminding her that at the same place and hour, eighteen years ago, she had opened her eyes on the May world. The sleep of youth is light as well as sound, and it may well be that the Princess, knowing all that was in store for her on the happy day that could not be too long, the many goodly tokens of her friends' love and gladness—not the least precious those from Germany awaiting her acceptance—the innumerable congratulations to be offered to her, was wide awake before the first violin or voice led the choir.

The bells rang out merry peals, carriages dashed by full of fine company. Kensington Square must have thought it was the old days of William and Mary, and Anne, or of George II and Queen Caroline at the latest, come back again. The last French dwellers in Edwardes Square must have talked volubly of what their predecessors had told them of Paris before the flood, Paris before the Orleanists, and the Bonapartists, and the Republic—Paris when the high-walled, green-gardened hotels of the Faubourg St. Germain were full of their ancient occupants; when Marie Antoinette was the daughter of the Caesars at the Tuileries, and the bergere Queen at le Petit Trianon. Before the sun went down many a bumper was drunk in honour of Kensington's own Princess, who should that day leave her girlhood all too soon behind her.

But London as well as Kensington rejoiced, and the festivities were wound up with a ball given at St. James's Palace by order of the poor King and Queen, over whose heads the cloud of sorrow and parting was hanging heavily. We are told that the ball opened with a quadrille, the Princess being "led off" by Lord Fitzalan, eldest son of the Earl of Surrey and grandson of the Duke of Norfolk, Premier Duke and Earl, Hereditary Earl Marshal and Chief Butler of England. Her Royal Highness danced afterwards with Prince Nicholas Esterhazy, son of the Austrian Ambassador. Prince Nicholas made a brilliant figure in contemporary annals—not because of his own merits, not because he married one of the fairest of England's noble daughters, whose gracious English hospitalities were long remembered in Vienna, but because of the lustre of the diamonds in his Court suit. He was said to sparkle from head to heel. There was a legend that he could not wear this splendid costume without a hundred pounds' worth of diamonds dropping from him, whether he would or not, in minor gems, just as jewels fell at every word from the mouth of the enchanted Princess. We have heard of men and women behind whose steps flowers sprang into birth, but Prince Nicholas left a more glittering, if a colder, harder track.

CHAPTER IV. THE ACCESSION.

On the day after that on which Princess Victoria celebrated her majority. Baron Stockmar arrived at Kensington. He came from the King of the Belgians to assist King Leopold's niece in what was likely to be the great crisis of her life. During Baron Stockmar's former stay in England he had been in the character first of Physician in Ordinary to Prince Leopold, and afterwards of Private Secretary and Comptroller of his household. In those offices he had spent the greater part of his time in this country from 1816 to 1834. He had accompanied his master on his ascending the Belgian throne, but had returned to England in a few years in order to serve him better there. Baron Stockmar was thus an old and early friend of the Princess's. In addition he had a large acquaintance with the English political world, and was therefore well qualified to advise her with the force of a disinterested adviser in her difficult position. In the view of her becoming Queen, although her three predecessors, including George III after he became blind, had appointed and retained private secretaries, the office was not popular in the eyes of the Government and country, and it was not considered advisable that the future Queen should possess such a servant, notwithstanding the weight of business—enormous in the matter of signatures alone—which would fall on the Sovereign. Without any recognised position, Stockmar was destined to share with the Prime Minister one portion of the duties which ought to have devolved on a private secretary. He was also to act as confidential adviser.

Baron Stockmar, [Footnote: "An active, decided, slender, rather little man, with a compact head, brown hair streaked with grey, a bold, short nose, firm yet full mouth, and what gave a peculiar air of animation to his face, with two youthful, flashing brown eyes, full of roguish intelligence and fiery provocation. With this exterior, the style of his demeanour and conversation corresponded; bold, bright, pungent, eager, full of thought, so that amid all the bubbling copiousness and easy vivacity of his talk, a certain purpose was never lost sight of in his remarks and illustrations."—Friedrich Carl Meyer.] who was at this time a man of fifty, was no ordinary character. He was sagacious, warm-hearted, honest, straightforward to bluntness, painstaking, just, benevolent to a remarkable degree; the friend of princes, without forfeiting his independence, he won and kept their perfect confidence to the end. He loved them heartily in return, without seeking anything from them; on the contrary, he showed himself reluctant to accept tokens of their favour. While lavishing his services on others, and readily lending his help to those who needed it, he would seem to have wanted comfort himself. An affectionate family man, he consented to constantly recurring separation from his wife and children in order to discharge the peculiar functions which were entrusted to him. For he played in the background—contented, nay, resolute to remain there—by the lawful exercise of influence alone, no small part in the destinies of several of the reigning houses in Europe, and through them, of their kingdoms. Like Carlyle, he suffered during his whole life from dyspepsia; like Carlyle, too, he was a victim to hypochondria, the result of his physical state. To these two last causes may be attributed some whimsicalities and eccentricities which were readily forgiven in the excellent Baron.

Baron Stockmar did not come too soon; in less than a month, on the 20th of
June, 1837, after an illness which he had borne, patiently and reverently,
King William died peacefully, his hand resting where it had lain for hours,
on the shoulder of his faithful Queen.

The death took place at Windsor, at a little after two o'clock in the morning. Immediately afterwards the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley, and the Lord Chamberlain, the Marquis of Conyngham, together with the Earl of Albemarle, the Master of the Horse, and Sir Henry Halford, the late King's physician, started from Windsor for Kensington. All through the rest of the summer night these solemn and stately gentlemen drove, nodding with fatigue, hailing the early dawn, speaking at intervals to pronounce sentence on the past reign and utter prognostications, of the reign which was to come. Shortly before five, when the birds were already in full chorus in Kensington Gardens, the party stood at the main door, demanding admission. This was another and ruder summons than the musical serenade which had been planned to wile the gentle sleeper sweetly from her slumbers and to hail her natal day not a month before. That had been a graceful, sentimental recognition of a glad event; this was an unvarnished, well-nigh stern arousal to the world of grave business and anxious care, following the mournful announcement of a death—not a birth. From this day the Queen's heavy responsibilities and stringent obligations were to begin. That untimely, peremptory challenge sounded the first knell to the light heart and careless freedom of youth.

Though it had been well known that the King lay on his death-bed, and Kensington without, as well as Kensington within, must have been in a high state of expectation, it does not appear that there were any watchers on the alert to rush together at the roll of the three royal carriages. Instead of the eager, respectful crowd, hurrying into the early-opened gates of the park to secure good places for all that was to be seen and heard on the day of the Princess's coming of age, Palace Green seems to have been a solitude on this momentous June morning, and the individual the most interested in the event, after the new-made Queen, instead of being there to pay his homage first, as he had offered his congratulations on the birthday a year before, was far away, quietly studying at the little university town on the Rhine.

"They knocked, they rang, they thumped for a considerable time before they could rouse the porter at the gate," says Miss Wynn, in the "Diary of a Lady of Quality," of these importunate new-comers. "They were again kept waiting in the courtyard, then turned into one of the lower rooms, where they seemed forgotten by everybody. They rang the bell and desired that the attendant of the Princess Victoria might be sent to inform Her Royal Highness that they requested an audience on business of importance. After another delay and another ringing to inquire the cause, the attendant was summoned, who stated that the Princess was in such a sweet sleep that she could not venture to disturb her. Then they said, 'We are come on business of State to the QUEEN, and even her sleep must give way to that.' It did; and, to prove that she did not keep them waiting, in a few minutes she came into the room in a loose white nightgown and shawl, her nightcap thrown off, and her hair falling upon her shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in her eyes, but perfectly collected and dignified."

In those days, when news did not travel very fast, and was not always delivered with strict accuracy, a rumour got abroad that the Queen was walking in the Palace Garden when the messengers came to tell her she had succeeded to the Crown. A great deal was made of the poetic simplicity of the surroundings of the interesting central figure—the girl in her tender bloom among the lilies and roses, which she resembled. We can remember a brilliant novel of the time which had a famous chapter beginning with an impassioned apostrophe to the maiden who met her high destiny "in a palace, in a garden." Another account asserted that the Queen saw the Archbishop of Canterbury alone in her ante-room, and that her first request was for his prayers.

The Marquis of Conyngham was the bearer to the Queen of a request from the Queen-dowager that she might be permitted to remain at Windsor till after the funeral. In reply, her Majesty wrote an affectionate letter of condolence to her aunt, begging her to consult nothing but her own health and convenience, and to stay at Windsor just as long as she pleased. The writer was observed to address this as usual "To the Queen of England." A bystander interposed, "Your Majesty, you are Queen of England." "Yes," answered the unelated, considerate girl-Queen, "but the widowed Queen is not to be reminded of the fact first by me."

Their message delivered, the messengers returned to London, and the next arrival was that of the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, who appeared at nine o'clock, had an interview with the Queen, which lasted for half an hour, when he also took his leave to issue summonses for a Privy Council, to he held in the course of the next two hours at Kensington Palace, and not at St. James's, as had been anticipated.

The little town of Kensington must now have been up and about, for, perhaps, never had there been such a day in its annals, as far transcending the birthday celebration as a great reality surpasses the brightest promise; and Kensington might hug the day with all its might, for it was to be nearly the last of its kingly, queenly experience. The temporary Court was to pass away presently, never to come back. No more kings and queens were likely to be born or to die at the quiet spot, soon to become a great noisy suburb of great London. No later Sovereign would quit the red-brick palace of Mary and Anne, and the First George, to reign at Buckingham or Windsor; no other Council be held in the low-browed, white-pillared room to dispute the interests of the unique Council which was to be held there this day.

The first Council of any Sovereign must awaken many speculations, while the bearing of the principal figure in the assumption of new powers and duties is sure to be watched with critical curiosity; but in the case of Queen Victoria the natural interest reached its utmost bounds. The public imagination was impressed in the most lively manner by the strong contrast between the tender youth and utter inexperience of the maiden Queen and the weighty and serious functions she was about to assume—an anomaly best indicated by the characteristic speech of Carlyle, that a girl at an age when, in ordinary circumstances, she would hardly be trusted to choose a bonnet for herself, was called upon to undertake responsibilities from which an archangel might have shrunk. More than this, the retirement in which the young Queen had grown up left her nature a hidden secret to those well-trained, grey-bearded men in authority, who now came to bid her rule over them. Thus, in addition to every other doubt to be solved, there was the pressing question as to how a girl would behave under such a tremendous test; for, although there had been queens-regnant, popular and unpopular before, Mary and Elizabeth had been full-grown women, and Anne had attained still more mature years, before the crown and sceptre were committed to the safe keeping of each in turn. Above all, how would this royal girl, on whose conduct so much depended, demean herself on this crucial occasion? Surely if she were overcome by timidity and apprehension, if she were goaded into some foolish demonstration of pride or levity, allowance must be made, and a good deal forgiven, because of the cruel strain to which she was subjected.

Shortly after eleven o'clock, the royal Dukes and a great number of Privy Councillors, amongst whom were all the Cabinet Ministers and the great officers of State and the Household, arrived at Kensington Palace, and were ushered into the State apartments. A later arrival consisted of the Lord Mayor, attended by the City Marshals in full uniform, on horseback, with crape on their left arms; the Chamberlain, Sword-bearer, Comptroller, Town Clerk, and Deputy Town Clerk, &c., accompanied by six aldermen. These City magnates appeared at the Palace to pay their homage to her Majesty. The Lord Mayor attended the Council.

We have various accounts—one from an eye-witness wont to be cool and critical enough—of what passed. "The first thing to be done," writes Greville, "was to teach her her lesson, which, for this purpose, Melbourne had himself to learn. I gave him the Council papers and explained all that was to be done, and he went and explained all this to her. He asked her if she would enter the room accompanied by the great officers of State, but she said she would come in alone. When the Lords were assembled, the Lord President (Lord Lansdowne) informed them of the King's death, and suggested, as they were so numerous, that a few of them should repair to the presence of the Queen, and inform her of the event, and that their lordships were assembled in consequence; and accordingly the two royal Dukes (the Duke of Cumberland, by the death of William, King of Hanover, and the Duke of Sussex—the Duke of Cambridge was absent in Hanover), the two Archbishops, the Chancellor, and Melbourne went with him. The Queen received them in the adjoining room alone."

It was the first time she had to act for herself. Until then she had been well supported by her mother, and by the precedence which the Duchess of Kent took as her Majesty's guardian. But the guardianship was over and the reign begun. There could be no more sheltering from responsibility, or becoming deference to, and reliance on, the wisdom of another and a much older person. In one sense the stay was of necessity removed. The Duchess of Kent, from this day "treated her daughter with respectful observance as well as affection." The time was past for advice, instruction, or suggestion, unless in private, and even then it would be charily and warily given by the sensible, modest mother of a Queen. Well for her Majesty that there was no more than truth in what one of the historians of the reign has said, in just and temperate language, of her character: "She was well brought up. Both as regards her intellect and her character her training was excellent. She was taught to be self-reliant, brave, and systematical."

As soon as the deputation had returned, the proclamation was read; "Whereas it has pleased Almighty God to call to His mercy our late Sovereign Lord, King William the Fourth, of blessed and glorious memory, by whose decease the imperial Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is solely and rightfully come to the high and mighty Princess Alexandrina Victoria, saving the rights of any issue of his late majesty, King William the Fourth, which may be born of his late Majesty's consort; we, therefore, the lords spiritual and temporal of this realm, being here assisted with these of his late Majesty's Privy Council, with numbers of others, principal gentlemen of quality, with the Lord Mayor, aldermen and citizens of London, do now hereby, with one voice and consent of tongue and heart, publish and proclaim that the high and mighty Princess Alexandrina Victoria is now, by the death of our late Sovereign, of happy memory, become our only lawful and rightful liege Lady, Victoria, by the grace of God Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, saving, as aforesaid: To whom, saving as aforesaid, we do acknowledge all faith and constant obedience, with all hearty and humble affection, beseeching God, by whom kings and queens do reign, to bless the royal Princess Victoria with long and happy years to reign over us.

"Given at the Court of Kensington this 20th day of June, 1837. (Signed by all the Lords of the Privy Council present). God Save the Queen."

"Then," resuming Mr. Greville's narrative, "the doors were thrown open, and the Queen entered, accompanied by her two uncles, who advanced to meet her. She bowed to the Lords, took her seat (an arm-chair improvised into a throne, with a footstool), and then read her speech in a clear, distinct, and audible voice, and without any appearance of fear or embarrassment:—

"'The severe and afflicting loss which the nation has sustained by the death of his Majesty, my beloved uncle, has devolved upon me the duty of administering the Government of this empire. This awful responsibility is imposed upon me so suddenly, and at so early a period of my life, that I should feel myself utterly oppressed by the burden were I not sustained by the hope that Divine Providence, which has called me to this work, will give me strength for the performance of it, and that I shall find in the purity of my intentions, and in my zeal for the public welfare, that support and those resources which usually belong to a more mature age and to longer experience.

"'I place my firm reliance upon the wisdom of Parliament and upon the loyalty and affection of my people. I esteem it also a peculiar advantage that I succeed to a Sovereign whose constant regard for the rights and liberties of his subjects, and whose desire to promote the amelioration of the laws and institutions of the country, have rendered his name the object of general attachment and veneration.

"'Educated in England, under the tender and enlightened care of a most affectionate mother, I have learned from my infancy to respect and love the Constitution of my native country.

"'It will be my unceasing study to maintain the reformed religion as by law established, securing at the same time to all the full enjoyment of religious liberty; and I shall steadily protect the rights and promote, to the utmost of my power, the happiness and welfare of all classes of my subjects.'"

Her Majesty's speech was after the model of English royal speeches; but one can feel at this day it was spoken in all ingenuousness and sincerity, and that the utterance—remarkable already for clearness and distinctness—for the first time, of the set words, ending in the solemn promise to do a Sovereign's duty, must have thrilled the hearts both of speaker and hearers.

A critical listener was not wanting, according to the testimony of the witness who, on his own account, certainly did not object to chronicle detraction of every kind. "The speech was admired, except by Brougham, who appeared in a considerable state of excitement. He said to Peel (whom he was standing near, and with whom he was not in the habit of communicating), '"amelioration;" that is not English. You might perhaps say "melioration," but "improvement" is the proper word.'

"'Oh!' said Peel, 'I see no harm in the word; it is generally used.'

"'You object,' said Brougham, 'to the sentiment; I object to the grammar.'

"'No,' said Peel, 'I don't object to the sentiment.'

"'Well, then, she pledges herself to the policy of our Government,' said Brougham.

"She was quite plainly dressed, and in mourning. After she had read her
speech, and taken and signed the oath (administered by the Archbishop of
Canterbury) for the security of the Church of Scotland, the Privy
Councillors were sworn, the two royal Dukes first by themselves."

The days of violence were ended, and whatever private, hopes he might once have entertained, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, was the first to hail his niece as the high and mighty Princess Alexandrina Victoria, to whom the imperial Crown of Great Britain and Ireland had solely and rightfully come—the first to proclaim her, with one voice and consent of tongue and heart, on the part of himself and his peers, his only lawful and rightful liege Lady Victoria, to whom he acknowledged all faith and rightful obedience, with all hearty and humble affection. It may be, the fact that he had succeeded to the throne of Hanover rendered the step less difficult. His name was also the first in the signatures of princes, Privy Councillors, peers, and gentlemen affixed in the next room to the proclamation. His brother, the Duke of Sussex, followed. They were both elderly men, with the younger older in infirmities than in years. The King of Hanover was sixty-six, the Duke of Sussex sixty-four years of age.

"And as these two old men, her uncles, knelt before her, swearing allegiance and kissing her hand," Greville went on, with a sense of pathos, curious for him, in the scene, "I saw her blush up to the eyes, as if she felt the contrast between their civil and their natural relations, and this was the only sign of emotion which she evinced. Her manner to them was very graceful and engaging; she kissed them both, and rose from her chair and moved towards the Duke of Sussex, who was farthest from her, and too infirm to reach her. She seemed rather bewildered at the multitude of men who were sworn, and who came one after another to kiss her hand, but she did not speak to anybody, nor did she make the slightest difference in her manner, or show any in her countenance, to any individual of any rank, station, or party. I particularly watched her when Melbourne and the Ministers, and the Duke of Wellington and Peel approached her. She went through the whole ceremony, occasionally looking at Melbourne for instruction when she had any doubt what to do, which hardly ever occurred, and with perfect coolness and self-possession, but at the same time with a graceful modesty and propriety particularly interesting and ingratiating. When the business was done she retired as she had entered, and I could see that nobody was in the adjoining room."

Mr. Greville's comment on the scene was singularly enthusiastic from such a man. "Never was anything like the first impression she produced, or the chorus of praise and admiration which is raised about her manner and behaviour, and certainly not without justice. It was something very extraordinary, and something far beyond what was looked for." He quoted Sir Robert Peel's and the Duke of Wellington's opinions in accordance with his own. "He (Sir Robert) likewise said how amazed he was at the manner and behaviour, at her apparent deep sense of her situation, her modesty, and at the same time her firmness. She appeared, in fact, to be awed, but not daunted; and afterwards, the Duke of Wellington told me the same thing, and added, that if she had been his own daughter he could not have desired to see her perform her part better."

We can understand the fatherly reference of the Duke, and the sort of personal pride he took in his young Queen. He had been present at her birth in this very Palace of Kensington; he had known her at every stage of her life hitherto. She was doing credit not only to herself and her mother, but to every friend she had, by her perfect fulfilment of what was required of her. Lord Campbell was equally eulogistic. "As soon as I heard that King William had expired I hurried to Kensington, to be present at the first Council of the new Sovereign. This, I think, was the most interesting scene I have ever witnessed…. I am quite in raptures with the deportment of the young Queen. Nothing could be more exquisitely proper. She looked modest, sorrowful, dejected, diffident, but at the same time she was quite cool and collected, and composed and firm. Her childish appearance was gone. She was an intelligent and graceful young woman, capable of acting and thinking for herself. Considering that she was the only female in the room, and that she had no one about her with whom she was familiar, no human being was ever placed in a more trying situation."

What was most conspicuous in the Queen had been already remarked upon and admired in the young girl at Queen Adelaide's Drawing-room. Here were the same entire simplicity, with its innate dignity only further developed; the power of being herself and no other, which left her thoughtful of what she ought to do—not of how she should look and strike others—and rendered her free to consider her neighbours; the docility to fit guidance, and yet the ability to judge for herself; the quick sense all the time of her high calling.

That first Council at Kensington has become an episode in history—a very significant one. It has been painted, engraved, written about many a time, without losing its fascination. Sir David Wilkie made a famous picture of it, which hangs in a corridor at Windsor In this picture the artist used certain artistic liberties, such as representing the Queen in a white muslin robe instead of a black gown, and the Privy Councillors in the various costumes of their different callings—uniforms with stars and ribands, lawyers' gowns and full-bottomed wigs, bishops' lawn, instead of the ordinary morning dress of the gentlemen of their generation. It must have tickled Wilkie as he worked to come to an old acquaintance of his boyhood and youth in John, Lord Campbell, and to recognise how bewilderingly far removed from the bleak little parish of Cults and the quiet little town of Cupar was the coincidence which summoned him, the distinguished painter, in the execution of a royal commission, to draw the familiar features of his early playmate in those of the Attorney-General, who appeared as a privileged member of the illustrious throng.

We still turn back wistfully to that bright dawn of a beneficent reign. We see the slight girlish figure in her simple mourning filling her place sedately at the head of the Council table. At the foot, facing her Majesty, sits the Duke of Sussex, almost venerable in his stiffness and lameness, wearing the black velvet skull-cap by which he was distinguished in those days. We look at the well-known faces, and think of the famous names among the crowd of mature men, each of whom was hanging on the words and looks of his mistress. There is Copley the painter's son, sagacious Lyndhurst, who lived to be the Nestor of the bench and the peerage; there is his great opponent, Robertson the historian's grand-nephew, Brougham, a tyrant of freedom, an illustrious Jack-of-all-trades, the most impassioned, most public-spirited, most egotistical of men. He was a contradiction to himself as well as to his neighbours. His strongly-marked face, with its shaggy brows, high cheek-bones, aggressive nose, mouth drooping at the corners, had not lost its mobility. He was restless and fault-finding in this presence as in any other. The Duke of Wellington's Roman nose lent something of the eagle to his aspect. It was a more patrician attribute than Sir Robert Peel's long upper lip, with its shy, nervous compression, which men mistook for impassive coldness, just as the wits blundered in calling his strong, serviceable capacity, noble uprightness, and patient labour "sublime mediocrity." William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne, was the type of an aristocrat, with brains and heart. He was still a very handsome man at fifty-eight, as he was also "perhaps the most graceful and agreeable gentleman of the generation." His colleague—destined to marry Lord Melbourne's sister, the most charming woman who ever presided in turn over two Ministerial salons, Lord Palmerston, in spite of his early achievements in waltzing at Almack's, was less personally and mentally gifted. He had rather an indiarubber-like elasticity and jauntiness than stateliness, or dignity, or grace. His irregular-featured face was comical, but he bore the bell in exhaustless spirits, which won him, late in life, the reputation of perennial juvenility, and the enviable if not altogether respectful sobriquet of "the evergreen Palm." Lord John Russell, with his large head and little body, of which Punch made stock, with his friendship for Moore and his literary turn, as well as his ambition to serve his country like a true Russell, was at this date wooing and wedding the fair young widow, Lady Ribblesdale, his devotion to whom had drawn from the wags a profane pun. They called the gifted little lord "the widow's mite." When the marriage ceremony was being performed between him and Lady Ribblesdale the wedding-ring fell from the bride's finger—an evil omen soon fulfilled for the marriage tie was speedily broken by her early death. "Plain John Campbell" was a very different man. The son of a minister of the Church of Scotland, in a presbytery which included among its members the father of Sir David Wilkie, his Scotch tongue, Scotch shrewdness, healthy appetite for work, and invulnerable satisfaction with himself and his surroundings, caused themselves to be felt in another sphere than that to which he was born.

"The Cabinet Ministers tendered to the Queen the seals of their respective offices, which her Majesty was most graciously pleased to return, and they severally kissed hands on their reappointment." The last business done was to arrange for the public proclamation of the Queen, and to take her pleasure with regard to the time, which she fixed for the day following, Wednesday, the 21st of June, at ten o'clock. When Lord Albemarle, for whom she had sent, went to her and told her he was come to take her orders, she said, "I have no orders to give. You must know this so much better than I do, that I leave it all to you. I am to be at St. James's at ten to-morrow, and must beg you to find me a conveyance proper for the occasion." We are further informed that the Queen, in the course of the morning, received a great many noble and distinguished personages. So finished a busy and exciting day; the herald of many other days crowded with engagements and excitement.

The Palace of St. James's, where the proclamation was to take place, had been for a long time the theatre of all the principal events in the lives of the kings and queens of England. Even the young Queen already viewed it in this light, for though she had been baptized at Kensington, she had been confirmed at St. James's. She had attended her first Drawing-rooms, and celebrated her coming-of-age ball there. St. James's is a brick building, like Kensington Palace, but is far older, and full of more stirring and tragic associations. It has an air of antiquity about it, if it has few architectural claims on the world's interest; but at least one front, that which includes the turreted gateway into St. James's Street, is not without picturesque beauty. The situation of the palace, considering that it is in the middle of a great city, is agreeable. It has its park, with a stretch of pleasant water on one side, and commands the leafy avenue of the Mall and the sweep of Constitution Hill. As a royal residence it dates as far back as Henry VIII., whose daughter Mary ended her sad life here. Both of the sons of James I. received it as a dwelling, and were connected with it in troubled days. Prince Henry fell into his pining sickness and died here. Charles, after bringing Henrietta Maria under its roof, and owning its shelter till three of his children were born, was carried to St. James's as a prisoner. He was taken from it in a sedan-chair to undergo his trial at his new palace of Whitehall. He was conveyed back under sentence of death. Here Bishop Juxon preached the last sermon to which the King listened, and administered to him the Sacrament; and here Charles took leave of his children—the little Duke of Gloucester and the girl-Princess Elizabeth. From St. James's the King went to the scaffold on the bitter January morning, followed by the snowy night in which "the white King" was borne to his dishonoured burial. Other and less tragic scenes were enacted within its bounds. A familiar figure in connection with Kensington Palace—Caroline of Anspach, wife of George II.—died like herself here. Her King had fallen into a stupor of sorrow across the bed where she lay in her last agony, and she forbade his being disturbed. She told those who were praying to pray aloud, that she might hear them; then raising herself up and uttering the single German word of acquiescence, "So," her brave spirit passed away.

When the Queen arrived, accompanied by her mother and her ladies, and attended by an escort, on the June morning of her proclamation, she was received by the other members of the royal family, the Household, and the Cabinet Ministers. Already every avenue to the Palace and every balcony and window within sight were crowded to excess. In the quadrangle opposite the window where her Majesty was to appear a mass of loyal ladies and gentlemen was tightly wedged. The parapets above were filled with people, conspicuous among them the big figure of Daniel O'Connell, the agitator, waving his hat and cheering with Irish effusion.

"At ten o'clock," says the Annual Register, "the guns in the park fired a salute, and immediately afterwards the Queen made her appearance at the window of the tapestried ante-room adjoining the ante-chamber, and was received with deafening cheers. She stood between Lords Melbourne and Lansdowne, in their State dresses and their ribands, who were also cheered, as was likewise her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent. At this and the two other windows we recognised the King of Hanover, the Dukes of Sussex, Wellington, and Argyle; Lords Hill, Combermere, Denbigh, Duncannon, Albemarle, and Winchester; Sir E. Codrington, Sir William Houston, and a number of other lords and gentlemen, with several ladies.

"Her Majesty looked extremely fatigued and pale, but returned the repeated cheers with which she was greeted with remarkable ease and dignity. She was dressed in deep mourning, with a white tippet, white cuffs, and a border of white lace under a small black bonnet, which was placed far back on her head, exhibiting her light hair in front simply parted over the forehead. Her Majesty seemed to view the proceedings with considerable interest. Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent was similarly dressed to the Queen."

"In the courtyard were Garter-King-at-Arms with heralds and pursuivants in their robes of office, and eight officers of arms on horseback bearing massive silver maces; sergeants-at-arms with their maces and collars; the sergeant-trumpeter with his mace and collar; the trumpets, drum-major and drums, and knights'-marshal and men."

"On Her Majesty showing herself at the Presence Chamber window, Garter-Principal-King-at-Arms having taken his station in the courtyard under the window, accompanied by the Duke of Norfolk as Earl-Marshal of England, read the proclamation containing the formal and official announcement of the demise of King William IV., and of the consequent accession of Queen Alexandrina Victoria to the throne of these realms … 'to whom we acknowledge all faith and constant obedience, with all humble and hearty affection, beseeching God, by whom kings and queens do reign, to bless the Royal Princess Alexandrina Victoria with long and happy years to reign. God save the Queen.' At the termination of this proclamation the band struck up the National Anthem, and a signal was given for the Park and Tower guns to fire in order to announce the fact of the proclamation being made. During the reading of the proclamation her Majesty stood at the Presence Chamber window, and immediately upon its conclusion the air was rent with the loudest acclamations by those within the area, which were responded to by the thousands without."

The scene drew from Elizabeth Barrett Browning the following popular verses:—

O, maiden, heir of kings,
A king has left his place;
The majesty of death has swept
All other from his face;
And thou upon thy mother's breast
No longer lean adown,
But take the glory for the rest,
And rule the land that loves thee best.
The maiden wept,
She wept to wear a crown.

* * * * *

God bless thee, weeping Queen,
With blessings more divine,
And fill with better love than earth
That tender heart of thine;
That when the thrones of earth shall be
As low as graves brought down,
A pierced hand may give to thee
The crown which angels shout to see.
Thou wilt not weep
To wear that heavenly crown.

A maiden Queen in her first youth, wearing the crown and wielding the sceptre, had become un fait accompli and the news spread over the length and breadth of the land. We have seen how it touched the oldest statesmen, to whom State ceremonials had become hackneyed—who were perhaps a little sceptical of virtue in high places. It may be imagined, then, how the knowledge, with each striking and picturesque detail, thrilled and engrossed all the sensitive, romantic young hearts in the Queen's dominions. It seemed as if womanhood and girlhood were exalted in one woman and girl's person—as if a new era must be inaugurated with such a reign, and every man worthy of the name would rally round this Una on the throne.

The prosaic side of the question was that the country was torn by the factions of Whig and Tory, which were then in the full bloom of party spirit and narrow rancorous animosity. The close of the life of William IV. had presented the singular and disastrous contradiction of a King in something like open opposition to his Ministers. William had begun by being a liberal in politics, but alarmed by the progress of reform, he had hung back resisted, and ended by being dragged along an unwilling tolerator of a Whig regime. The Duke of Kent had been liberal in his opinions when liberality was not the fashion. The Duchess was understood to be on the same side; her brother and counsellor, the King of the Belgians, was decidedly so. Accordingly, the Whigs hailed the accession of Queen Victoria as their triumph, likely to secure and prolong their tenure of office. They claimed her as their Queen, with a boasting exultation calculated to wound and exasperate every Tory in the kingdom. Lord Campbell, who, though a zealous Whig, was comparatively cool and cautious, wrote in his journal, after the Queen's first Council, "We basked in the full glare of royal sunshine;" and this tone was generally adopted by his party. They met with some amount of success in their loud assertion, and the consequence was a strain of indignant bitterness in the Tory rejoinder. A clever partisan inscribed on the window-pane of an inn at Huddersfield:

"The Queen is with us," Whigs insulting say,
"For when she found us in, she let us stay."
It may be so; but give me leave to doubt
How long she'll keep you when she finds you out.

There was even some cooling of Tory loyalty to the new Queen. Chroniclers tell us of the ostentatious difference in enthusiasm with which, at Tory dinners, the toasts of the Queen, and the Queen-dowager were received.

As a matter of course, Lord Melbourne became the Queen's instructor in the duties of her position, and as she had no private secretary, he had to be in constant attendance upon her—to see her, not only daily, but sometimes three or four times a day. The Queen has given her testimony to the unwearied kindness and pleasantness, the disinterested regard for her welfare, even the generous fairness to political opponents, with which her Prime Minister discharged his task. It seems as if the great trust imposed on him drew out all that was most manly and chivalrous in a character which, along with much that was fine and attractive, that won to him all who came in close contact with him, was not without the faults of the typical aristocrat, correctly or incorrectly defined by the popular imagination. Lord Melbourne, with his sense and spirit, honesty and good-nature, could be haughtily, indifferent, lazily self-indulgent, scornfully careless even to affectation, of the opinions of his social inferiors, as when he appeared to amuse himself with "idly blowing a feather or nursing a sofa-cushion while receiving an important and perhaps highly sensitive deputation from this or that commercial interest." The time has come when it is fully recognised that whatever might have been Lord Melbourne's defects, he never brought them into his relations with the Queen. To her he was the frank, sincere, devoted adviser of all that it was wisest and best for her to do. "He does not appear to have been greedy of power, or to have used any unfair means of getting or keeping it. The character of the young Sovereign seems to have impressed him deeply. His real or affected levity gave way to a genuine and lasting desire to make her life as happy and her reign as successful as he could. The Queen always felt the warmest affection and gratitude for him, and showed it long after the public had given up the suspicion that she could be a puppet in the hands of a Minister. "But men—especially Lord Melbourne's political adversaries—were not sufficiently large-minded and large-hearted to put this confidence in him beforehand. They remembered with wrath and disgust that, even in the language of men of the world, "his morals were not supposed to be very strict." He had been unhappy in his family life. The eccentricities and follies of Lady Caroline Lamb had formed the gossip of several London seasons long years before. Other scandals had gathered round his name, and though they had been to some extent disproven, it was indignantly asked, could there be a more unsuitable and undesirable guide for an innocent royal girl of eighteen than this accomplished, bland roue of threescore? Should he be permitted to soil—were it but in thought—the lily of whose stainlessness the nation was so proud? The result proved that Lord Melbourne could be a blameless, worthy servant to his Sovereign.

In the meantime the great news of Queen Victoria's accession had travelled to the princely student at Bonn, who responded to it in a manly, modest letter, in which he made no claim to share the greatness, while he referred to its noble, solemn side. Prince Albert wrote on the 26th of June: "Now you are Queen of the mightiest land of Europe; in your hand lies the happiness of millions. May Heaven assist you and strengthen you with its strength in that high but difficult task. I hope that your reign may be long, happy, and glorious, and that your efforts may be rewarded by the thankfulness and love of your subjects." To others he expressed his satisfaction at what he heard of his cousin's astonishing self-possession, and of the high praise bestowed on her by all parties, "which seemed to promise so auspiciously for her reign." But so far from putting himself forward or being thrust forward by their common friends as an aspirant for her hand, while she was yet only on the edge of that strong tide and giddy whirl of imposing power and dazzling adulation which was too likely to sweep her beyond his grasp, it was resolved by King Leopold and the kindred who were most concerned in the relations of the couple, that, to give time for matters to settle down, for the young Queen to know her own mind—above all, to dissipate the premature rumour of a formal engagement between the cousins which had taken persistent hold of the public mind ever since the visit of the Saxe-Coburg princes to Kensington Palace in the previous year, Prince Albert should travel for several months. Accordingly, he set out, in company with his brother, to make an enjoyable tour, on foot, through Switzerland and the north of Italy. To a nature like his, such an experience was full of keen delight; but in the midst of his intoxication he never forgot his cousin. The correspondence between them had been suffered to drop, but that she continued present to his thoughts was sufficiently indicated by the souvenirs he collected specially for her: the views of the scenes he visited, the Alpenrosen he gathered for her in its native home, Voltaire's autograph.

The Queen left Kensington, within a month of her uncle's death, we do not need to be told "greatly to the regret of the inhabitants." She went on the 13th of July to take up her residence at Buckingham Palace. "Shortly after one o'clock an escort of Lancers took up a position on the Palace Green, long previous to which an immense concourse of respectable persons had thronged the avenue and every open space near the Palace." About half-past one an open carriage drawn by four greys, preceded by two outriders, and followed by an open barouche, drawn by four bays, drove up from her Majesty's mews, Pimlico, and stopped before the grand entrance to the Duchess of Kent's apartments. The Queen, accompanied by the Duchess of Kent and Baroness Lehzen, almost immediately got into the first carriage. There was a tumult of cheering, frankly acknowledged. It is said the young Queen looked "pale and a little sad" at the parting moment. Then with a dash the carriages vanished in a cloud of July dust, and the familiar Palace Green, with its spreading trees and the red chimneys beyond—the High Street—Kensington Gore, were left behind. Kensington's last brief dream of a Court was brought to an abrupt conclusion. What was worse, Kensington's Princess was gone, never to return to the changed scene save for the most fleeting of visits.

We should like to give here one more story of her Majesty's stay at Kensington—a story that refers to these last days. We have already spoken of an old soldier-servant of the Duke of Kent's, said to have been named Stillman, who was quartered with his family—two of them sickly—in a Kensington cottage of the period, visited by the Duchess of Kent and the Princess Victoria. The little boy had died; the ailing girl still lived. The girl's clergyman, a gentleman named Vaughan, went to see her some days after the Queen had quitted the Palace, and found the invalid looking unusually bright. He inquired the reason. "Look there!". said the girl, and drew a book of Psalms from under her pillow, "look what the new Queen has sent me to-day by one of her ladies, with the message that, though now, as Queen of England, she had to leave Kensington, she did not forget me." The lady who had brought the book had said the lines and figures in the margin were the dates of the days on which the Queen herself had been accustomed to read the Psalms, and that the marker, with the little peacock on it, was worked by the Princess's own hand. The sick girl cried, and asked if this act was not beautiful?

CHAPTER V. THE PROROGUING OF PARLIAMENT, THE VISIT TO GUILDHALL, AND THE CORONATION.

Buckingham Palace had been a seat of the Duke of Buckingham's, which was bought by George II., and in the next reign was settled on Queen Charlotte instead of Somerset House, and called the "Queen's House." It was rebuilt by George IV. but not occupied by him, and had been rarely used by King William. Besides its gardens, which are of some extent, it shares with St. James's, which it is near, the advantage of St. James's Park, one of the most agreeable in London, and full of historic memories. Though it, too, was modernised by George IV., its features have still much interest. It was by its canal, which has been twisted into the Serpentine, that the Merry Monarch strolled alone, lazily playing with his dogs, feeding his ducks, and by his easy confidence flattering and touching his good citizens of London. On the same water his gay courtiers practised their foreign accomplishment of skating, which they had brought back with them from the Low Countries. In the Mall both Charles and his brother, the Duke of York, joined in the Court game of Palle Malle, when a ball was struck with a mallet through an iron ring down a walk strewn with powdered cockle-shells. At a later period the Mall was the most fashionable promenade in London. While dinners were still early on Sunday afternoons, the fashionable world walked for an hour or two after dinner in the Mall. An eyewitness declared that he had seen "in one moving mass, extending the whole length of the Mall, five thousand of the most lovely women in this country of female beauty, all splendidly attired, and accompanied by as many well-dressed men." For, as Mr. Hare, in his "Walks in London," points out, the frequenters of the Mall were very different in one respect from the company in the Row: "The ladies were in full dress and gentlemen carried their hats under their arms."

One relic of the past survives intact in the park—that is, the cow-stalls, which formerly helped to constitute "Milk Fair." Mr. Hare tells us "the vendors are proud of the number of generations through which the stalls have been held in their families."

From Buckingham Palace the Queen went in State on the 17th of July to close Parliament. The carriage, with the eight cream-coloured horses, was used. As far as we can judge, this was the first appearance in her Majesty's reign of "the creams," so dear to the London populace. The carriage was preceded by the Marshalmen, a party of the Yeomen of the Guard in State costumes, and runners. The fourth carriage, drawn by six black horses, contained the Marchioness of Lansdowne, the Duchess of Sutherland, the Duke of Argyle, Lord Steward and Gold Stick in Waiting. The Queen was accompanied by the Earl of Albemarle, Master of the Horse, and the Countess of Mulgrave, the Lady-in-Waiting. The procession, escorted by a squadron of the Horse Guards, moved into Whitehall, and was cheered in Parliament Street by deafening shouts from a mass of spectators lining the streets and covering the house-tops. On arriving opposite the entrance of the House of Lords her Majesty was received by a battalion of the Grenadier Guards, whose splendid band, when she alighted, played the National Anthem.

Thus heralded, the young Queen entered the old Houses of Parliament, seated herself on the throne of her ancestors, and accorded her maiden reception to her loyal Lords and faithful Commons. This was the first occasion in a great assembly that people remarked the natural gift which has proved a valuable possession to her Majesty, and has never failed to awaken the admiration of the hearers. We allude to the peculiar silvery clearness, as well as sweetness, of a voice which can be heard in its most delicate modulations through the whole House. In reply to the Speaker of the House of Commons' assurance of the Commons' cordial participation in that strong and universal feeling of dutiful and affectionate attachment which prevailed among the free and loyal people of which they were the representatives, the Queen read her speech in an unfaltering voice, thanking the Parliament for its condolence upon the death of his late Majesty, and for its expressions of attachment and affection to herself, announcing her determination to preserve all the rights, spiritual and civil, of her subjects, touching on the usual topics in a royal speech in its relation to home and foreign affairs, and making the solemn assertion: "I ascend the throne with a deep sense of the responsibility which is imposed upon me, but I am supported by the consciousness of my own right intentions and by my dependence on the protection of Almighty God." Fanny Kemble was present at this memorable scene, and has given her impression of it. Her testimony, as a public speaker, is valuable. "The Queen was not handsome, but very pretty, and the singularity of her great position lent a sentimental and poetical charm to her youthful face and figure. The serene, serious sweetness of her candid brow and clear soft eyes gave dignity to the girlish countenance, while the want of height only added to the effect of extreme youth of the round but slender person, and gracefully moulded hands and arms. The Queen's voice was exquisite, nor have I ever heard any spoken words more musical in their gentle distinctness than "My Lords and Gentlemen," which broke the breathless silence of the illustrious assembly whose gaze was riveted on that fair flower of royalty. The enunciation was as perfect as the intonation was melodious, and I think it is impossible to hear a more excellent utterance than that of the Queen's English by the English Queen."

The accession of Queen Victoria almost coincided with a new era in English history, art and letters, new relations in politics at home and abroad, new social movements undreamt of when she was born. In spite of the strong party spirit, the country was at peace within and without. France, the foreign neighbour of most importance to England, was also at peace under a so-called "citizen-king." The "Tractarian" movement at Oxford was startling the world with a proposed return to the practices of the primitive Church, while it laid the foundation of the High Church and Ritualistic parties in the modern Church of England. The names of Newman and Pusey especially were in many mouths, spoken in various terms of reprobation and alarm, or approval and exultation. Next to Tractarianism, Chartism—the people's demand for a charter which should meet their wants—was a rising force, though it had not reached its full development. Arnold was doing his noble work, accomplishing a moral revolution in the public schools of England. Milman and Grote had arisen as historians. Faraday was one of the chief lights of science. Sir John Herschel occupied his father's post among the stars. Beautiful modest Mary Somerville showed what a woman might do with the Differential Calculus; Brewster had taken the place of Sir Humphry Davy. Murchison was anticipating Robert Dick and Hugh Miller in geology. Alfred Tennyson had already published two volumes of poems; Browning had given to the world his "Paracelsus," and this very year (1837) his Strafford had been performed at Covent Garden, while it was still on the cards that his calling might be that of a great dramatist. Dickens, the Scott of the English lower-middle classes, was bringing out his "Pickwick Papers." Disraeli had got into the House of Commons at last, and his "Vivian Grey" was fully ten years old. So was Bulwer's "Pelbam"—the author of which also aided in forming the literary element of the House of Commons in the Queen's first Parliament. Mrs. Gore, Mrs. Trollope, Miss Mitford, Mrs. S. C. Hail, and Harriet Martinean represented under very different aspects the feminine side of fiction. Macready remained the stage king, but he shared his royalty with the younger Kean. A younger Kemble had also played Juliet well, but the stage queen was Helen Faucit. In painting, Turner was working in his last style; Stanfield's sea-pieces were famous. Mulready and Leslie were in the front as genre painters. Maclise was making his reputation; Etty had struggled into renown, while poor Haydon was sinking into despair. Landseer was already the great animal painter. Sir C. Eastlake had court commissions. Wilkie, too, still had royal commissions, but his best work was done, and he was soon to set out on his last travels in a vain search after health and strength.

Withal the world was a light-hearted world enough—not so hurried as it is to-day, though railways were well established, and the electric telegraph had been hit upon in this same 1837. Young blood continued hot, and play was apt to be riotous. Witness the fantastic frolics of the Marquis of Waterford—public property in those years. He had inherited the eccentricities of the whole Delaval race, and not content with tickling his peers in England, carried his whims and pranks into Scotland and Ireland and across the Channel. Various versions of his grotesque feats circulated and scintillated through all classes, provoking laughter, and tempting to clumsy imitation, till the gentleman may be said to have had a species of world-wide reputation in a madly merry way.

The Queen held a review at Windsor on the 28th of September, 1837. She had dwelt at Windsor before as a cherished guest; but what must it not have been to her to enter these gates as the Queen? The rough hunting-seat of William Rufus had long been the proudest and fairest palace in England. St George's Tower and battlements are the most royal in these realms. St. George's Hall and St. George's Chapel are the best examples of ancient and modern chivalry. The stately terrace commanding the red turrets of Eton and the silvery reaches of the Thames, where George III. and Queen Charlotte, with their large family and household, were wont to promenade on Sunday afternoons for the benefit of their Majesties' loyal subjects, where the blind old King used to totter along supported by two of his faithful Princesses; the green alleys and glades of the ancient forest, with the great boles of the venerable oaks—Queen Elizabeth's among them; Virginia Water sparkling in the sunshine or glimmering in the moonlight, all make up such a kingly residence, as in many respects cannot be surpassed. What must it not have been to enter the little Court town, another Versailles or Fontainebleau, as its liege Lady, to be hailed and welcomed by the goodly throng of Eton lads—those gay and gallant attendants on royal Windsor pageants—to pass through these halls as their mistress, and fairly recognise that all the noble surroundings were hers, with all England, all Britain and many a great dependency and colony on which the sun never sets—hers to rule over, hers to bless if she would?

At the review, in compliment to her soldiers whom she saw marshalled in their disciplined masses, and saluting her as the Captain of their Captains—even of Wellington himself—the Queen wore a half-military dress—a tight jacket with deep lappels, the blue riband of the Garter across one shoulder, and its jewelled star upon her breast, a stocklike black neckerchief in stiff folds holding up the round throat, and on the head—hiding nearly all the fair hair—a round, high, flatcap with a broad black "snout"; beneath it the soft, open, girlish face, with its single-hearted dignity.

In this month of September the Queen heard that her sister-queen and girl friend, Donna Maria da Gloria, had received consolation for the troubles of her kingdom in becoming the youthful mother of a son and heir, Prince Ferdinand of Portugal.

By November the Court was back at Buckingham Palace, and on the 9th the Queen paid her first visit to the City of London, which received her with magnificent hospitality.

Long before the hour appointed for her Majesty's departure for Guildhall, all the approaches to the palace and the park itself presented dense crowds of holiday folks. At two o'clock the first carriage of the procession emerged from the triumphal arch, and in due time came the royal State carriage, in which sat the Queen, attended by the Mistress of the Robes and the Master of the Horse. Her Majesty's full-dress was a "splendid pink satin shot with silver." She wore a queenly diamond tiara, and, as we are told, looked remarkably well. Her approach was the signal for enthusiastic cheering, which increased as she advanced, while the bells of the city churches rang out merry peals. The fronts of the houses were decorated with bright-coloured cloth, green boughs, and such flowers as November had spared. Devices in coloured lamps waited for the evening illumination to bring them out in perfection. Venetian masts had not been hoisted then in England, but "rows of national flags and heraldic banners were stretched across the Strand at several points, and busts and portraits of her Majesty were placed in conspicuous positions." The only person in the Queen's train who excited much interest was the Duke of Wellington, and he heard himself loudly cheered. The mob was rapidly condoning what they had considered his errors as a statesman, and restoring him to his old eminence, in their estimation, as the hero of the long wars, the conqueror of Bonaparte. Applause or reprobation the veteran met with almost equal coolness. When he had been besieged by raging, threatening crowds, calling upon him to do justice to Queen Caroline, as he rode to Westminster during the wild days of her trial, he had answered "Yes, yes," without a muscle of his face moving, and pushed on straight to his destination. For many a year he was to receive every contrite huzza, as he had received every fierce hiss, with no more than the twinkling of an eyelid or the raising of two fingers.

The gathering at Temple Bar—real, grim old Temple Bar, which had borne traitors' heads in former days—was so great that a detachment of Life Guards, as well as a strong body of police, had work to do in clearing a way for the carriages. The aldermen had to be accommodated with a room in Child's old banking-house, founded by the typical industrious apprentice who married his master's daughter. It sported the quaint old sign of the "Marigold," and was supposed to hold sheaves of papers containing noble, nay, royal secrets, as well as bushels of family jewels, in its strong boxes. It had even a family romance of its own, for did not the great Child of his day pursue his heiress in her flight to Gretna with the heir of the Villiers, who, leaning, pistol in hand, from his postchaise in front, sent a bullet into the near horse of the chaise behind, and escaped with his prize?

Undisturbed by these exciting stories, the aldermen waited in the dim interior—charged with other than money-lending mysteries, till the worthy gentlemen were joined by the Lord Mayor and sheriffs, when they proceeded to mount their chargers in Temple Yard—perhaps the most disturbing proceeding of any, with the riders' minds a little soothed by the circumstance that the horses had been brought from the Artillery barracks at Woolwich, and each was led by the soldier to which it belonged, in the capacity of groom.

"A few minutes before three the approach of the Queen was announced. The Lord Mayor dismounted, and, taking the City sword in his hand, stood on the south side of Temple Bar. As soon as the Queen's carriage arrived within the gateway it stopped, and then, unfortunately, it began to rain." The Queen's weather, which has become proverbial, of which we are given to boast, did not attend her on this occasion. Perhaps it would have been too much to expect of the clouds when the date was the 9th of November. Regardless of the weather, "the Lord Mayor delivered the keys of the City to the Queen, which her Majesty restored in the most gracious manner." At this time the multitude above, around, and below, from windows, scaffolding, roofs, and parapets, cheered long and loud. The Lord Mayor remounted, and, holding the City sword aloft, took his place immediately before the royal carriage, after which the aldermen, members of the Common Council, and civic authorities formed in procession.

Rather a curious ceremony was celebrated in front of St. Paul's. Booths and hustings had been erected in the enclosure for the accommodation of members of the different City companies and the boys of Christ's Hospital. "The royal carriage having stopped in the middle of the road, opposite the cathedral gate, a platform was wheeled out, on which were Mr. Frederick Gifford Nash, senior scholar of Christ's Hospital, and the head master and treasurer. The scholar, in conformity with an old usage, delivered an address of congratulation to her Majesty, concluding with an earnest prayer for her welfare. 'God Save the Queen' was then sung by the scholars and a great part of the multitude."

But already the dreariness and discomfort of a dark and wet November afternoon had been too much even for the staunchest loyalty, and had dispersed the feebler spirits among the onlookers. The Lord Mayor assisted her Majesty to alight at the door of the Guildhall, where the Lady Mayoress was waiting to be presented by her husband. We have a full description of the Council-room and retiring-room, with their draperies of crimson and gold, including the toilet-table, covered with white satin, and embroidered with the initials V. R., a crown and wreath in gold, at which the maiden Queen was understood to receive the last touches to her toilet, while she was attended by such distinguished matrons as the Duchess of Kent, the Duchess of Gloucester, and the Duchess of Cambridge. In the drawing-room the address of the City of London was read by the Recorder, and replied to by the Queen. At twenty minutes past five dinner was announced, and the Queen, preceded by the Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress, and conducted by the Lord Chamberlain, in "respectful silence," descended into the hall where the banquet was prepared. The great old hall, with its "glorious timber roof," could hardly have known itself. Gog and Magog—compared by Nathaniel Hawthorne to "playthings for the children of giants"—must have looked down with goggle eyes at the transformation. These were different days from the time when Anne Ascue, of Kelsey, was tried there for heresy, and the brave, keen-witted lady told her judges, when examined on the doctrine of transubstantiation, she had heard that God made man, but that man made God she had never heard; or when gallant Surrey encountered his enemies; or melodious Waller was called to account. It was on the raised platform at the east end of the hall that the Common Council had expended its strength of ornament and lavished its wealth. Here London outdid itself. The throne was placed there. "It was surmounted by an entablature, with the letters V. R. supporting the royal crown and cushion. In the front was an external valance of crimson velvet, richly laced and trimmed with tassels. The back-fluting was composed of white satin, relieved with the royal arms in gold. The curtains were of crimson velvet, trimmed with lace and lined with crimson silk. The canopy was composed of crimson velvet, with radiated centre of white satin enamelled with gold, forming a gold ray from which the centre of velvet diverged; a valance of crimson velvet, laced with gold, depended from the canopy, which was intersected with cornucopia, introducing the rose, thistle, and shamrock, in white velvet. Beneath this splendid canopy was placed the State-chair, which was richly carved and gilt, and ornamented with the royal arms and crown, including the rose, thistle, and shamrock, in crimson velvet. Its proportions were tastefully and judiciously diminished to a size that should in some sort correspond with the slight and elegant figure of the young Sovereign for whom it was provided. The platform on which the throne stood was covered with ermine and gold carpeting of the richest description." … In front of the throne was placed the royal table, extending the whole width of the platform. It was thirty-four feet long and eight wide, and was covered with a cloth of the most exquisite damask, trimmed with gold lace and fringe. The sides and front of the platform were decked with a profusion of the rarest plants and shrubs. The royal table was on a dais above the level of the hall. A large mirror at each side of the throne reflected the gorgeous scene. From the impromptu dais four long tables extended nearly half-way down the hall, where the Lord and Lady Mayoress presided over the company of foreign ambassadors, Cabinet Ministers, nobility, aldermen, and members of the Common Council. The "royal avenue" led up the middle of the hall to the throne, with the tables on each side. The Queen took her seat on the throne; the Lord and Lady Mayoress stood on either side of her Majesty, but were almost immediately bidden be seated at their table.

The company had now time to study the central figure, the cause and culmination of the assembly. Over her pink and silver she wore the riband and order of the Garter, with the George appended. Besides her diamond tiara she had a stomacher of brilliants, and diamond ear-rings. She sat in the middle of a regal company, only two of the others young like herself. To the rest she must have been the child of yesterday; while to each and all she preserved in full the natural relations, and was as much the daughter, niece, and cousin as of old; yet, at the same time, she was every inch the Queen. What a marvel it must have seemed—still more to those who sat near than to those who stood afar. The Queen was supported by the Dukes of Sussex and Cambridge, the Duchesses of Kent, Gloucester, Cambridge, and Sutherland; and there were present her two cousins, Prince George and Princess Augusta Of Cambridge.

After dinner, Non Nobus Domine was sung; and then, preceded by a flourish of trumpets, the common crier advanced to the middle of the hall and said, "The Right Honourable the Lord Mayor gives the health of our most gracious Sovereign, Queen Victoria."

The company simultaneously rose and drank the toast with enthusiasm. "God Save the Queen" was sung, after which her Majesty rose and bowed repeatedly with marked goodwill…. The common crier then shouted, "Her Majesty gives the Lord Mayor and Prosperity to the City of London." Bishop's "When the Wind Blows" was sung. The only other toast was, "The Royal Family," given by the Lord Mayor.

At half-past eight her Majesty's carriage was announced. The weather was unpleasant, the streets were unusually dirty, but a vast crowd once more greeted her. On arriving at the end of Cheapside, she was hailed out of the glimmering illumination and foggy lamplight by "God Save the Queen," again sung by many hundred voices, accompanied by a band of wind instruments, the performance of the Harmonic Society, and the music was followed all the way by enthusiastic cheering. The Baroness Bunsen remarked of such a scene long afterwards, "I was at a loss to conceive how any woman's sides can 'bear the beating of so strong a throb' as must attend the consciousness of being the object of all that excitement, and the centre of attraction for all those eyes. But the Queen has royal strength of nerve." Not so much strength of nerve, we should say, as strength of single-heartedness and simple sense of duty which are their own reward, together with the comparative immunity produced by long habit.

Still it is a little relief to turn from so much State and strain to a brief glimpse of the girl-Queen in something like the privacy of domestic life. In the month of November, 1837, the Attorney-General, Lord Campbell, with his wife, Lady Stratheden, received an invitation to Buckingham Palace, to dine with her Majesty at seven, and one of the guests wrote thus of the entertainment: "I went, and found it exceedingly agreeable, although by no means so grand as dining at Tarvit with Mrs. Rigg. The little Queen was exceedingly kind to me, and said she had heard from the Duchess of Gloucester that I had the most beautiful children in the world. She asked me how many we had, and when she heard seven, seemed rather appalled, considering this a number which she would never be able to reach. She seems in perfect health, and is as merry and playful as a kitten."

Amongst the other innumerable engagements which engrossed every moment of the Queen from the time of her accession, she had been called on to sit for her portrait to many eager artists—among them Hayter and Sir David Wilkie. The last has recorded his impression of her in his manly, unaffected, half-homely words. "Having been accustomed to see the Queen from a child, my reception had a little the air of that of an early acquaintance. She is eminently beautiful, her features nicely formed, her skin smooth, her hair worn close to her face in a most simple way, glossy and clean-looking. Her manner, though trained to act the Sovereign, is yet simple and natural. She has all the decision, thought, and self-possession of a queen of older years, has all the buoyancy of youth, and from the smile to the unrestrained laugh, is a perfect child. While I was there she was sitting to Pistrucci for her coin, and to Hayter for a picture for King Leopold."

The mention of the coin recalls the "image and superscription" on the gold, silver, and copper that passes through our hands daily, which we almost forget to identify with the likeness of the young Queen. About this time also commenced the royal patronage of Landseer, which resulted later in many a family group, in which numerous four-footed favourites had their place. At the exhibition of Landseer's works after his death, the sight of these groups recalled to elderly men and women who had been his early neighbours, the days when a goodly cavalcade of ladies and gentlemen, with their grooms, on horseback, used to sweep past the windows, and the word went that the young Queen was honouring the painter by a visit to his studio.

On the 20th of November the Queen went in State to the House of Lords to open Parliament for the first time, with as great a crowd of members and strangers present as had flocked to witness the prorogation in July. In the course of the month of December the bills were passed which fixed the Queen's income at three hundred and eighty-five thousand pounds a year, and further raised the Duchess of Kent's annuity from twenty-two thousand, which it had been latterly, to thirty thousand a year. On the 23rd of December the Queen went to give her assent to the bills, and thank her Parliament personally, according to old custom on such an occasion. On presenting the bill the Speaker observed that it had been framed in "a liberal and confiding spirit." The Queen simply bowed her acknowledgement.

Lord Melbourne, "with the tears in his eyes," told Lord Campbell that in one of his first interviews with the Queen she had said to him, "My father's debts must be paid." Accordingly the late Duke of Kent's debts were paid by his daughter, in the name of herself and her mother, in the first year of Queen Victoria's reign. In the second year she discharged the debts which the Duchess of Kent had incurred in meeting the innumerable heavy calls made upon her, not only as the widow of one of the Royal Dukes, but as the mother of the future Sovereign.

The summer of 1838 was gay with the preparations for the Queen's coronation. All classes took the greatest interest in it, so that splenetic people pronounced the nation "coronation mad." Long before the event coronation medals were being struck, coronation songs and hymns written, coronation ribands woven. Every ingenious method by which the world could commemorate the joyful season was put in practice. The sentiment was not confined to the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. "Foreigners of various conditions, and from all quarters of Europe, flocked in to behold the inauguration of the maiden monarch of the British Empire. In the Metropolis for some weeks anterior to the event the excitement was extreme. The thousand equipages which thronged the streets, the plumed retainers of the ambassadors, the streams of swarthy strangers, and the incessant din of preparation, which resounded by night as well as by day, along the intended line of the procession, constituted by themselves a scene of no ordinary animation and interest, and sustained the public mind in an unceasing stretch of expectation."

Some disappointment was experienced on the knowledge that the ancient custom of a royal banquet in Westminster Hall on the coronation day was to be dispensed with. But the loss was compensated by a procession—a modification of the old street pageant—on the occasion.

On the morning of the 28th of June the weather was not promising. It was cold for the season, and some rain fell; but the shower ceased, and the day proved fresh and bright, with sunshine gilding the darkest cloud. The Tower artillery awoke the heaviest City sleepers. It is needless to say a great concourse, in every variety of vehicle and on foot, streamed from east to west through the "gravelled" streets, lined with soldiers and policemen, before the barriers were put up. "The earth was alive with men," wrote an enthusiastic spectator; "the habitations in the line of march cast forth their occupants to the balconies or the house-tops; the windows were lifted out of their frames, and the asylum of private life, that sanctuary which our countrymen guard with such traditional jealousy, was on this occasion made accessible to the gaze of the entire world."

At ten o'clock the Queen left Buckingham Palace in the State coach, to the music of the National Anthem and a salute of guns, and passed beneath the Royal Standard hoisted on the marble arch. A marked feature of the procession was the magnificent carriages and escorts of the foreign ambassadors: the splendid uniform of the German Jagers delighted the populace. A deeper and subtler feeling was produced by the sight of one of Napoleon's marshals, Soult, Wellington's great adversary, rearing his white head in a coach the framework of which had belonged to the State carriage of the Prince de Conde, and figured in the beaux jours of Louis XVI. The consciousness that this worthy foe had come to do honour to the young Queen awoke a generous response from the crowd. Soult was cheered lustily along the whole route, and in the Abbey itself, so that he returned to France not only full of personal gratification at the welcome he had received, but strongly convinced of the goodwill of John Bull to Frenchmen in general. How the balls of destiny roll! Soult feted in London, Ney dead by a traitor's death, filling his nameless grave in Pere la Chaise. The procession, beginning with trumpeters and Life Guards, wound its way in relays of foreign ambassadors, members of the royal family and their suites—the Duchess of Kent first—the band of the Household Brigade, the Queen's bargemaster and her forty-eight watermen—honorary servants for many a day—twelve carriages with her Majesty's suite, a squadron of Life Guards, equerries, gentlemen riders and military officials, the royal huntsmen, yeomen-prickers, and foresters, six of her Majesty's horses, with rich trappings, each horse led by two grooms; the Knight-Marshal, marshalmen, Yeomen of the Guard, the State coach—drawn by eight cream-coloured horses, attended by a Yeoman of the Guard at each wheel, and two footmen at each door—the Gold Stick, Viscount Combermere, and the Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard, the Earl of Ilchester, riding on either side. In the coach sat the Queen, the Mistress of the Robes (the Duchess of Sutherland), the Master of the Horse (the Earl of Albemarle), and the Captain-General of the Royal Archers (the Duke of Buccleugh). The whole was wound up by a squadron of Life Guards. In this order of stately march, under the June sky, emerging from the green avenues of the park, the procession turned up Constitution Hill, traversed Piccadilly, St. James's Street, Pall Mall, Cockspur Street, and by Charing Cross, Whitehall, and Parliament Street, reached the west door of Westminster Abbey—

Where royal heads receive the sacred gold.

At the Abbey door, at half-past eleven, the Queen was received by the great officers of State, the noblemen bearing the regalia, the bishops carrying the patina, the chalice, and the Bible. Her Majesty proceeded to the robing-room, and there was a hush of expectation in the thronged interior, where the great persons who were to play a part in the ceremony and the privileged ticket-holders had been waiting patiently for long hours.

Underneath the galleries and below the platform were ranged lines of Foot Guards. The platform (under the central tower) was the most conspicuous object. It was covered with cloth of gold, and bore the chair of homage, or throne, facing the altar. Farther on, within the altar-rails, was "St. Edward's Chair," or the chair decorated by "William the Painter" for Edward. Enclosed within it is the "Stone of Destiny," or Fatal Stone of Scone—a sandy stone, supposed to have formed the pillow on which Jacob slept at Bethel, and long used in the coronation of the Scotch kings. In this chair all the kings of England, since the time of Edward I., have been crowned. The altar was covered with massive gold plate.

The galleries of the Abbey were arranged for the members of the House of Commons, the foreign ambassadors, the judges, Knights of the Bath, members of the Corporation, &c. &c. The floor of the transepts was occupied by benches for the peers and peeresses, who may be said to be in their glory at a coronation; the space behind them was for the ticket-holders.

Harriet Martineau has preserved some of the splendours and "humours" of the coronation with her usual clever power of observation and occasional caustic commentary. "The maids called me at half-past two that June morning, mistaking the clock. I slept no more, and rose at half-past three. As I began to dress the twenty-one guns were fired, which must have awakened all the sleepers in London. When the maid came to dress me she said numbers of ladies were already hurrying to the Abbey. I saw the grey old Abbey from the window as I dressed, and thought what would have gone forward within it before the sun set upon it. My mother had laid out her pearl ornaments for me. The feeling was very strange of dressing in crape, blonde, and pearls at five in the morning…. The sight of the rapidly filling Abbey was enough to go for. The stone architecture contrasted finely with the gay colours of the multitude. From my high seat I commanded the whole north transept, the area with the throne, and many portions of galleries, and the balconies which were called the vaultings. Except a mere sprinkling of oddities, everybody was in full dress. In the whole assemblage I counted six bonnets. The scarlet of the military officers mixed in well, and the groups of the clergy were dignified; but to an unaccustomed eye the prevalence of Court dresses had a curious effect. I was perpetually taking whole groups of gentlemen for Quakers till I recollected myself. The Earl-Marshal's assistants, called Gold Sticks, looked well from above, lightly fluttering about in white breeches, silk stockings, blue laced frocks, and white sashes. The throne—an arm-chair with a round back, covered, as was its footstool, with cloth of gold—stood on an elevation of four steps in the centre of the area. The first peeress took her seat in the north transept opposite, at a quarter before seven, and three of the bishops came next. From that time the peers and their ladies arrived faster and faster. Each peeress was conducted by two Gold Sticks, one of whom handed her to her seat, and the other bore and arranged her train on her lap, and saw that her coronet, footstool, and book were comfortably placed. I never saw anywhere so remarkable a contrast between youth and age as in these noble ladies." Miss Martineau proceeds to remark in the strongest and plainest terms on the unbecoming effect of full dress, with "hair drawn to the top of the head, to allow the putting on of the coronet" on these venerable matrons. She goes on to express her admiration of a later generation of peeresses. "The younger were as lovely as the aged were haggard…. About nine the first gleams of the sun slanted into the Abbey and presently travelled down to the peeresses. I had never before seen the full effect of diamonds. As the light travelled each peeress shone like a rainbow. The brightness, vastness, and dreamy magnificence of the scene produced a strange effect of exhaustion and sleepiness…. The great guns told when the Queen had set forth, and there was renewed animation. The Gold Sticks flitted about, there was tuning in the orchestra, and the foreign ambassadors and their suites arrived in quick succession. Prince Esterhazy crossing a bar of sunshine was the most prodigious rainbow of all. He was covered with diamonds and pearls, and as he dangled his hat it cast a dancing radiance all round.

"At half-past eleven the guns told that the Queen had arrived, but as there was much to be done in the robing-room, there was a long pause before she appeared."

A little after twelve the grand procession of the day entered the choir. The Prebendaries and Dean of Westminster and Officers-at-Arms, the Comptroller, Treasurer, Vice-Chamberlain, and Lord Steward of her Majesty's Household, the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord President, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, came first. When these gentlemen were peers their coronets were carried by pages. The Treasurer bore the crimson bag with the medals; the Vice-Chancellor was attended by an officer from the Jewel Office, conveying, on a cushion, the ruby ring and the sword for the offering. Then followed the Archbishops of Canterbury, York, and Armagh, with the Lord Chancellor, each archbishop in his rochet, with his cap in his hand; the princesses of the blood royal, all in "robes of estate" of purple velvet and wearing circlets of gold; the Duchess of Cambridge, her train borne by Lady Caroline Campbell and a gentleman of her household, her coronet by Viscount Villiers; the Duchess of Kent, her train borne by Lady Flora Hastings, and her coronet by Viscount Morpeth; the Duchess of Gloucester, her train borne by Lady Caroline Legge, and her coronet by Viscount Evelyn. (The royal generation next that of George III. was fast dwindling away when these three ladies represented the six daughters and the wives of six of the sons of the old King and Queen. But there were other survivors, though they were not present to-day. The Queen-dowager; Princess Augusta, an aged woman of seventy; Princess Elizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse-Homburg, nearly as old, and absent in Germany; the Queen as well as the King of Hanover, who had figured formerly as Duke and Duchess of Cumberland; and Princess Sophia, who was ten years younger than Princess Augusta, and resident in England, but who was an invalid.) The regalia came next, St. Edward's staff, borne by the Duke of Roxburgh, the golden spurs borne by Lord Byron, the sceptre with the cross borne by the Duke of Cleveland, the third sword borne by the Marquis of Westminster, Curtana borne by the Duke of Devonshire, the second sword borne by the Duke of Sutherland, each nobleman's coronet carried by a page, Black Rod and Deputy-Garter walking before Lord Willoughby d'Eresby, Lord Great Chamberlain of England, with page and coronet.

The princes of the blood royal were reduced to two. The Duke of Cambridge, in his robe of estate, carrying his baton as Field-Marshal, his coronet borne by the Marquis of Granby, his train by Sir William Gomm; the Duke of Sussex, his coronet carried by Viscount Anson, his train by the Honourable Edward Gore.

The High Constable of Ireland, the Duke of Leinster; the High Constable of Scotland, the Earl of Errol, with their pages and coronets. The Earl-Marshal of England, the Duke of Norfolk, with his staff, attended by two pages; the sword of State, borne by Viscount Melbourne, with his page and coronet; the Lord High Constable of England, the Duke of Wellington, with his staff and baton as Field-Marshal, attended by two pages. The sceptre with the dove, borne by the Duke of Richmond, page and coronet; St. Edward's crown, borne by the Lord High Steward, the Duke of Hamilton, attended by two pages; the orb, borne by the Duke of Somerset, page and coronet. The patina, borne by the Bishop of Bangor; the Bible, borne by the Bishop of Winchester; the chalice, borne by the Bishop of London.

At last the Queen entered, walking between the Bishops of Bath and Wells and Durham, with Gentlemen-at-Arms on each side. She was now a royal maiden of nineteen, with a fair, pleasant face, a slight figure, rather small in stature, but showing a queenly carriage, especially in the pose of the throat and head. She wore a royal robe of crimson velvet furred with ermine and bordered with gold lace. She had on the collars of her orders. Like the other princesses, she wore a gold circlet on her head. Her train was borne by eight "beautiful young ladies," as Sir David Wilkie called them, all dressed alike, some of them destined to officiate again as the Queen's bridesmaids, when the loveliness of the group attracted general attention and admiration. These noble damsels were Lady Adelaide Paget, Lady Fanny Cowper, Lady Anne Wentworth Fitzwilliam, Lady Mary Grimston, Lady Caroline Gordon Lennox, Lady Mary Talbot, Lady Catherine Stanhope, Lady Louisa Jenkinson. The Ladies of her Majesty's Household came next in order, the Duchess of Sutherland, the Mistress of the Robes, walking first, followed by Lady Lansdowne as first Lady of the Bed-chamber. Other ladies of the Bed-chamber, whose names were long familiar in association with that of the Queen, included Ladies Charlemont, Lyttelton, Portman, Tavistock, Mulgrave, and Barham. The Maids of Honour bore names once equally well known in the Court Circular, while the office brought with it visions of old historic Maids prominent in Court gossip, and revealed to this day possibilities of sprightliness reined in by Court etiquette, and innocent little scrapes condoned by royal graciousness and kindness. The Maids of Honour at the Queen's coronation were the Honourable Misses Margaret Dillon, Cavendish, Lister, Spring Rice, Harriet Pitt, Caroline Cocks, Matilda Paget, and Murray. One has heard and read less of the Women of the Bed-chamber, noble ladies also, no doubt, but by the time the superb procession reached them, with the gathering up of the whole in Goldsticks, Captains of the Royal Archers, of the Yeomen of the Guard, of the Gentlemen-at-Arms, though pages and coronets still abounded, the strained attention could take in no more accessories, but was fain to return to the principal figure in the pageant, and dwell with all eyes on her.

"The Queen looked extremely well, and had an animated countenance." The scene within the choir on her entrance was so gorgeous, that, it is said, even the Turkish Ambassador, accustomed we should say to gorgeousness, stopped short in astonishment. As the Queen advanced slowly toward the centre of the choir, she was received with hearty plaudits, everybody rising, the anthem, "I was glad," sung by the musicians, ringing through the Abbey. "At the close of the anthem, the Westminster boys (who occupied seats at the extremity of the lower galleries on the northern and southern sides of the choir) chanted Vivat Victoria Regina. The Queen moved towards a chair placed midway between the chair of homage and the altar, on the carpeted space before described, which is called the theatre." Here she knelt down on a faldstool set for her before her chair, and used some private prayers. She then took her seat in the chair and the ceremonial proceeded.

First came "the Recognition" by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who advanced to the Queen, accompanied by the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord High Constable, and the Earl-Marshal, preceded by the Deputy-Garter, and repeated these words: "Sirs, I here present unto you Queen Victoria, the undoubted Queen of this realm, wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage, are you willing to do the same?" Then burst forth the universal cry from the portion of her Majesty's subjects present, "God save Queen Victoria." The Archbishop, turning to the north, south, and west sides of the Abbey, repeated, "God save Queen Victoria," the Queen turning at the same time in the same direction.

"The Bishops who bore the patina, Bible, and chalice in the procession, placed the same on the altar. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops who were to read the Litany put on their copes. The Queen, attended by the Bishops of Durham and Bath and Wells, and the Dean of Westminster, with the great officers of State and noblemen bearing the regalia, advanced to the altar, and, kneeling upon the crimson velvet cushion, made her first offering, being a pall or altar-cloth of gold, which was delivered by an officer of the Wardrobe to the Lord Chamberlain, by his lordship to the Lord Great Chamberlain, and by him to the Queen, who delivered it to the Archbishop of Canterbury, by whom it was placed on the altar. The Treasurer of the Household then delivered an ingot of gold, of one pound weight, to the Lord Great Chamberlain, who having presented the same to the Queen, her Majesty delivered it to the Archbishop, by whom it was put into the oblation basin.

"The Archbishop delivered a prayer in the prescribed form. The regalia were laid on the altar by the Archbishop. The great officers of State, except the Lord Chamberlain, retired to their respective places, and the Bishops of Worcester and St. David's read the Litany. Then followed the Communion service, read by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of Rochester and Carlisle. The Bishop of London preached the sermon from the following text, in the Second Book of Chronicles, chapter xxxiv. verse 31: 'And the king stood in his place, and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep his commandments, and his testimonies, and his statutes, with all his heart, and with all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant which are written in this book.'

"In the course of his sermon from this text, the Bishop praised the late king for his unfeigned religion, and exhorted his youthful successor to follow in his footsteps. At the conclusion of the sermon 'the oath' was administered to the Queen by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The form of swearing was as follows: The Archbishop put certain questions, which the Queen answered in the affirmative, relative to the maintenance of the law and the established religion; and then her Majesty, with the Lord Chamberlain and other officers, the sword of State being carried before her, went to the altar, and laying her right hand upon the Gospels in the Bible carried in the procession, and now brought to her by the Archbishop of Canterbury, said, kneeling:

"'The things which I have here before promised I will perform and keep. So help me God.'

"The Queen kissed the book and signed a transcript of the oath presented to her by the Archbishop. She then kneeled upon her faldstool, and the choir sang 'Veni, Creator, Spiritus.'

"'The Anointing' was the next part of the ceremony. The Queen sat in King Edward's chair; four Knights of the Garter—the Dukes of Buccleugh and Rutland, and the Marquesses of Anglesea and Exeter—held a rich cloth of gold over her head; the Dean of Westminster took the ampulla from the altar, and poured some of the oil it contained into the anointing spoon, then the Archbishop anointed the head and hands of the Queen, marking them in the form of a cross, and pronouncing the words, 'Be thou anointed with holy oil, as kings, priests, and prophets were anointed; and as Solomon was anointed king by Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, so be you anointed, blessed, and consecrated Queen over this people, whom the Lord your God hath given you to rule and govern, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.'

"The Archbishop then said the blessing over her.

"The spurs were presented by the Lord Chamberlain, and the sword of State by Viscount Melbourne, who, however, according to custom, redeemed it with a hundred shillings, and carried it during the rest of the ceremony. Then followed the investing with the 'royal robes and the delivery of the orb,' and the 'investiture per annulum et baculum,' by the ring and sceptre.

"The Coronation followed. The Archbishop of Canterbury offered a prayer to God to bless her Majesty and crown her with all princely virtues. The Dean of Westminster took the crown from the altar, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, with the Archbishops of York and Armagh, the Bishops of London, Durham, and other Prelates, advanced towards the Queen, and the Archbishop taking the crown from the Dean reverently placed it on the Queen's head. This was no sooner done than from every part of the crowded edifice arose a loud and enthusiastic cry of 'God save the Queen,' mingled with lusty cheers, and accompanied by the waving of hats and handkerchiefs. At this moment, too, the Peers and Peeresses present put on their coronets, the Bishops their caps, and the Kings-of-Arms their crowns; the trumpets sounding, the drums beating, and the Tower and park guns firing by signal."

Harriet Martineau, who, like most of the mere spectators, failed to see and hear a good deal of the ceremony, was decidedly impressed at this point. "The acclamation when the crown was put on her head was very animating; and in the midst of it, in an instant of time, the Peeresses were all coroneted—all but the fair creature already described." The writer refers to an earlier paragraph in which she had detailed a small catastrophe that broke in upon the harmonious perfection of the scene. "One beautiful creature, with transcendent complexion and form, and coils upon coils of light hair, was terribly embarrassed about her coronet; she had apparently forgotten that her hair must be disposed with a view to it, and the large braids at the back would in no way permit the coronet to keep on. She and her neighbours tugged vehemently at her braids, and at last the thing was done after a manner, but so as to spoil the wonderful effect of the self-coroneting of the Peeresses."

To see "the Enthronement," the energetic Norwich woman stood on the rail behind her seat, holding on by another rail. But first "the Bible was presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Queen, who delivered it again to the Archbishop, and it was replaced on the altar by the Dean of Westminster.

"The Benediction was delivered by the Archbishop, and the Te Deum sung by the choir. At the commencement of the Te Deum the Queen went to the chair which she first occupied, supported by two Bishops; she was then 'enthroned,' or 'lifted,' as the formulary states, into the chair of homage by the Archbishops, Bishops, and Peers surrounding her Majesty. The Queen delivered the sceptre with the cross to the Lord of the Manor of Worksop (the Duke of Norfolk), and the sceptre with the stone to the Duke of Richmond, to hold during the performance of the ceremony of homage. The Archbishop of Canterbury knelt and did homage for himself and other Lords Spiritual, who all kissed the Queen's hand. The Dukes of Sussex and Cambridge, removing their coronets, did homage in these words:—

"'I do become your liege man of life and limb, and of earthly worship; and faith and truth I will bear unto you, to live and die, against all manner of folks, so help me God.'

"They touched the crown on the Queen's head, kissed her left cheek, and then retired. It was observed that her Majesty's bearing towards her uncles was very kind and affectionate. The Dukes and other Peers then performed their homage, the senior of each rank pronouncing the words; as they retired each Peer kissed her Majesty's hand. The Duke of Wellington, Earl Grey, and Lord Melbourne were loudly cheered as they ascended the steps to the throne. Lord Rolle, "who was upwards of eighty, stumbled and fell on going up the steps. The Queen immediately stepped forward and held out her hand to assist him, amidst the loudly expressed admiration of the entire assembly."

"While the Lords were doing homage, the Earl of Surrey, Treasurer of the Household, threw coronation medals, in silver, about the choir and lower galleries, which were scrambled for with great eagerness.

"At the conclusion of the homage the choir sang the anthem, 'This is the day which the Lord hath made.' The Queen received the two sceptres from the Dukes of Norfolk and Richmond; the drums beat, the trumpets sounded, and the assembly cried out—'God save Queen Victoria!'" [Footnote: Annual Register.]

Harriet Martineau, from her elevated perch, says, "Her small dark crown looked pretty, and her mantle of cloth of gold very regal; she, herself, looked so small as to appear puny." (At a later stage of the proceedings the same keen critic notes that the enormous train borne by her ladies made the figure of the Queen look still less than it really was.) "The homage was as pretty a sight as any: trains of Peers touching her crown, and then kissing her hand. It was in the midst of that process that poor Lord Rolle's disaster sent a shock through the whole assemblage. It turned me very sick. The large infirm old man was held up by two Peers, and had nearly reached the royal footstool when he slipped through the hands of his supporters, and rolled over and over down the steps, lying at the bottom coiled up in his robes. He was instantly lifted up, and he tried again and again, amidst shouts of admiration of his valour. The Queen at length spoke to Lord Melbourne, who stood at her shoulder, and he bowed approval; on which she rose, leaned forward, and held out her hand to the old man, dispensing with his touching the crown. He was not hurt, and his self-quizzing on his misadventure was as brave as his behaviour at the time. A foreigner in London gravely reported to his own countrymen, what he entirely believed on the word of a wag, that the Lords Rolle held their title on the condition of performing the feat at every coronation."