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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood
+by Grace Greenwood
+
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+Title: Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood
+
+Author: Grace Greenwood
+
+Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6469]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 17, 2002]
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEEN VICTORIA, HER GIRLHOOD ***
+
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+Produced by Anne Soulard, Juliet Sutherland
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+
+
+QUEEN VICTORIA.
+HER GIRLHOOD AND WOMANHOOD.
+
+BY GRACE GREENWOOD
+
+
+
+
+A DEDICATORY LETTER
+
+TO CAMILLA TOULMIN (MRS. NEWTON CROSLAND), LINTON LODGE, BLACKHEATH PARK:
+
+
+Permit me, my dear friend, to inscribe to you this very imperfect Life of
+your beloved Queen, in remembrance of that dear old time when the world
+was brighter and more beautiful than it is now (or so it seemeth to me)
+and things in general were pleasanter;--when better books were written,
+especially biographies, and there were fewer of them;--when the "gentle
+reader" and the "indulgent critic" were extant;--when Realism had not
+shouldered his way into Art;--when there were great actors and actresses
+of the fine old school, like Macready and the elder Booth--Helen Faucit
+and Charlotte Cushman; and real orators, like Daniel O'Connell and Daniel
+Webster;--when there was more poetry and more romance in life than now;--
+when it took less silk to make a gown, but when a bonnet was a bonnet;--
+when there was less east-wind and fog, more moonlight to the month, and
+more sunlight to the acre;--when the scent of the blossoming hawthorn was
+sweeter in the morning, and the song of the nightingale more melodious in
+the twilight;--when, in short, you and I, and the glorious Victorian era,
+were young.
+
+GRACE GREENWOOD.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+I send this book out to the world with many misgivings, feeling that it
+is not what I would like it to be--not what I could have made it with
+more time. I have found it especially difficult to procure facts and
+incidents of the early life of the Queen--just that period which I felt
+was of most interest to my younger readers. So much was I delayed that
+for the actual arrangement and culling of my material, and the writing of
+the volume, I have had less than three months, and during that time many
+interruptions in my work--the most discouraging caused by a serious
+trouble of the eyes.
+
+I am aware that the book is written in a free and easy style, partly
+natural, and partly formed by many years of journalistic work--a style
+new for the grave business of biographical writing, and which may be
+startling in a royal biography,--to my English readers, at least. I aimed
+to make a pleasant, simple fireside story of the life and reign of Queen
+Victoria--and I hope I have not altogether failed. Unluckily, I had no
+friend near the throne to furnish me with reliable, unpublished personal
+anecdotes of Her Majesty.
+
+I have made use of the labor of several English authors; first, of that
+of the Queen herself, in the books entitled, "Leaves from the Journal of
+Our Life in the Highlands," and "The Early Years of His Royal Highness
+the Prince-Consort"; next, of that of Sir Theodore Martin, K.C.B., in his
+"Life of the Prince-Consort." For this last appropriation I have Sir
+Theodore Martin's gracious permission. I am much indebted to Hon. Justin
+McCarthy, in his "History of Our Own Times." I have also been aided by
+various compilations, and by Lord Ronald Gower's "Reminiscences."
+
+I have long felt that the wonderful story of the life of the Queen of
+England--of her example as a daughter, wife and mother, and as the
+honored head of English society could but have, if told simply, yet
+sympathetically, a happy and ennobling influence on the hearts and minds
+of my young countrywomen. I have done my work, if lightly, with entire
+respect, though always as an American and a republican. I could not do
+otherwise; for, though it has made me in love with a few royal people, it
+has not made me in love with royalty. I cannot but think that, so far
+from its being a condition of itself ennobling to human character, those
+born into it have often to fight to maintain a native nobility,--as Queen
+Victoria has fought, as Prince Albert fought,--for I find the "blameless
+Prince" saying: "To my mind the exaltation of royalty is only possible
+through the personal character of the sovereign."
+
+It suits England, however, "excellent well," in its restricted
+constitutional form; she has all the venerable, splendid accessories--and
+I hope "Albert the Good" may have founded a long race of good kings; but
+it would not do for us;--a race cradled in revolution, and nurtured on
+irreverence and unbelief, as regards the divine right of kings and the
+law of primogeniture. To us it seems, though a primitive, an unnatural
+institution. We find no analogies for it, even in the wildest venture of
+the New World. It is true the buffalo herd has its kingly commander, who
+goes plunging along ahead, like a flesh-and-blood locomotive; the drove
+of wild horses has its chieftain, tossing his long mane, like a banner,
+in advance of his fellows; even the migratory multitudes of wild-fowl,
+darkening the autumn heavens, have their general and engineer,--but none
+of these leaders was born, or hatched into his proud position. They are
+undoubtedly chosen, elected, or elect themselves by superior will or
+wisdom. Entomology does, indeed, furnish some analogies. The sagacious
+bees, the valiant wasps, are monarchists,--but then, they have only
+queens.
+
+G. G.
+
+LONDON, _October 20th_, 1883.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+PART I.
+CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD
+
+PART II.
+WOMANHOOD AND QUEENHOOD
+
+PART III.
+WIFEHOOD AND MOTHERHOOD
+
+PART IV.
+WIDOWHOOD
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+1. THE PRINCESS VICTORIA.
+2. QUEEN VICTORIA AT THE AGE OF 18.
+3. THE DUCHESS OF KENT, MOTHER OF THE QUEEN.
+4. THE QUEEN AT THE AGE OF 64.
+5. PRINCE ALBERT, HUSBAND OF THE QUEEN.
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Sketch of the Princess Charlotte--Her Love for her Mother--Anecdotes--Her
+Happy Girlhood--Her Marriage with Prince Leopold--Her Beautiful Life at
+Claremont--Baron Stockmar, the Coburg Mentor--Death of the Princess
+Charlotte.
+
+
+It seems to me that the life of Queen Victoria cannot well be told
+without a prefacing sketch of her cousin, the Princess Charlotte, who,
+had she lived, would have been her Queen, and who was in many respects
+her prototype. It is certain, I think, that Charlotte Augusta of Wales,
+that lovely miracle-flower of a loveless marriage, blooming into a noble
+and gracious womanhood, amid the petty strifes and disgraceful intrigues
+of a corrupt Court, by her virtues and graces, by her high spirit and
+frank and fearless character, prepared the way in the loyal hearts of the
+British people, for the fair young kinswoman, who, twenty-one years after
+her own sad death, reigned in her stead.
+
+Through all the bright life of the Princess Charlotte--from her beautiful
+childhood to her no less beautiful maturity--the English people had
+regarded her proudly and lovingly as their sovereign, who was to be; they
+had patience with the melancholy madness of the poor old King, her
+grandfather, and with the scandalous irregularities of the Prince Regent,
+her father, in looking forward to happier and better things under a good
+woman's reign; and after all those fair hopes had been coffined with her,
+and buried in darkness and silence, their hearts naturally turned to the
+royal little girl, who might possibly fill the place left so drearily
+vacant. England had always been happy and prosperous under Queens, and a
+Queen, please God, they would yet have.
+
+The Princess Charlotte was the only child of the marriage of the Prince
+Regent, afterwards George IV., with the Princess Caroline of Brunswick,
+Her childhood was overshadowed by the hopeless estrangement of her
+parents. She seems to have especially loved her mother, and by the
+courage and independence she displayed in her championship of that good-
+hearted but most eccentric and imprudent woman, endeared herself to the
+English people, who equally admired her pluck and her filial piety--on
+the maternal side. They took a fond delight in relating stories of
+rebellion against her august papa, and even against her awful grandmamma,
+Queen Charlotte. They told how once, when a mere slip of a girl, being
+forbidden to pay her usual visit to her poor mother, she insisted on
+going, and on the Queen undertaking to detain her by force, resisted,
+struggling right valiantly, and after damaging and setting comically awry
+the royal mob-cap, broke away, ran out of the palace, sprang into a
+hackney-coach, and promising the driver a guinea, was soon at her
+mother's house and in her mother's arms. There is another--a Court
+version of this hackney-coach story--which states that it was not the
+Queen, but the Prince Regent that the Princess ran away from--so that
+there could have been no assault on a mob-cap. But the common people of
+that day preferred the version I have given, as more piquant, especially
+as old Queen Charlotte was known to be the most solemnly grand of
+grandmammas, and a personage of such prodigious dignity that it was
+popularly supposed that only Kings and Queens, with their crowns actually
+on their heads, were permitted to sit in her presence.
+
+As a young girl, the Princess Charlotte was by no means without faults of
+temper and manner. She was at times self-willed, passionate, capricious,
+and imperious, though ordinarily good-humored, kindly, and sympathetic. A
+Court lady of the time, speaking of her, says: "She is very clever, but
+at present has the manners of a hoyden school-girl. She talked all sorts
+of nonsense to me, but can put on dignity when she chooses." This writer
+also relates that the royal little lady loved to shock her attendants by
+running to fetch for herself articles she required--her hat, a book, or a
+chair--and that one summer, when she stayed at a country-house, she would
+even run to open the gate to visitors, curtsying to them like a country
+lassie. The Earl of Albemarle, who was her playmate in childhood, his
+grandmother being her governess, relates that one time when they had the
+Prince Regent to lunch, the chop came up spoiled, and it was found that
+Her Royal Highness had descended into the kitchen, and, to the dismay of
+the cook, insisted on broiling it. Albemarle adds that he, boy-like,
+taunted her with her culinary failure, saying: "_You_ would make a
+pretty Queen, wouldn't you?" At another time, some years later, she came
+in her carriage to make a morning-call at his grandmother's, and seeing a
+crowd gathered before the door, attracted by the royal liveries, she ran
+out a back-way, came round, and mingled with the curious throng
+unrecognized, and as eager to see the Princess as any of them.
+
+Not being allowed the society of her mother, and that of her father not
+being considered wholesome for her, the Princess was early advised and
+urged to take a companion and counsellor in the shape of a husband. The
+Prince of Orange, afterwards King of the Netherlands, was fixed upon as a
+good _parti_ by her royal relatives, and he came courting to the English
+Court. But the Princess did hot altogether fancy this aspirant, so, after
+her independent fashion, she declined the alliance, and "the young man
+went away sorrowing."
+
+One of the ladies of the Princess used to tell how for a few minutes
+after the Prince had called to make his sad _adieux_, she hoped that
+Her Royal Highness had relented because she walked thoughtfully to the
+window to see the last of him as he descended the palace steps and sprang
+into his carriage, looking very grand in his red uniform, with a tuft of
+green feathers in his hat. But when the Princess turned away with a gay
+laugh, saying, "How like a radish he looks," she knew that all was over.
+It is an odd little coincidence, that a later Prince of Orange,
+afterwards King of the Netherlands, had the same bad luck as a suitor to
+the Princess or Queen Victoria.
+
+Charlotte's next lover, Leopold, of Saxe-Coburg, an amiable and able
+Prince, was more fortunate. He won the light but constant heart of the
+Princess, inspiring her not only with tender love, but with profound
+respect. Her high spirit and imperious will were soon tamed to his firm
+but gentle hand; she herself became more gentle and reasonable, content
+to rule the kingdom of his heart at least, by her womanly charms, rather
+than by the power of her regal name and lofty position. This royal love-
+marriage took place in May, 1816, and soon after the Prince and Princess,
+who had little taste for Court gaieties, went to live at Claremont, the
+beautiful country residence now occupied by the young Duke of Albany, a
+namesake of Prince Leopold. Here the young couple lived a life of much
+domestic privacy and simplicity, practicing themselves in habits of
+study, methodical application to business, and wise economy. They were
+always together, spending happy hours in work and recreation, passing
+from law and politics to music and sketching, from the study of the
+British Constitution to horticulture. The Princess especially delighted
+in gardening, in watering with her own hands her favorite plants.
+
+This happy pair had an invaluable aid and ally in the learned Baron
+Stockmar, early attached to Prince Leopold as private physician, a rare,
+good man on whom they both leaned much, as afterwards did Victoria and
+Albert and their children. Indeed the Baron seems to have been a
+permanent pillar for princes to lean upon. From youth to old age he was
+to two or three royal households the chief "guide, philosopher, and
+friend"--a Coburg mentor, a Guelphic oracle.
+
+So these royal lovers of Claremont lived tranquilly on, winning the love
+and respect of all about them, and growing dearer and dearer to each
+other till the end came, the sudden death of the young wife and mother,--
+an event which, on a sad day in November, 1817, plunged the whole realm
+into mourning. The grief of the people, even those farthest removed from
+the Court, was real, intense, almost personal and passionate. It was a
+double tragedy, for the child too was dead. The accounts of the last
+moments of the Princess are exceedingly touching. When told that her baby
+boy was not living, she said: "I am grieved, for myself, for the English
+people, but O, above all, I feel it for my dear husband!" Taking an
+opportunity when the Prince was away from her bedside, she asked if she
+too must die. The physician did not directly reply, but said, "Pray be
+calm."
+
+"I know what _that_ means," she replied, then added, "Tell it to my
+husband,--tell it with caution and tenderness, and be sure to say to him,
+from me, that I am still the happiest wife in England."
+
+It seems, according to the Queen, that it was Stockmar that took this
+last message to the Prince, who lacked the fortitude to remain by the
+bedside of his dying wife--that it was Stockmar who held her hand till it
+grew pulseless and cold, till the light faded from her sweet blue eyes as
+her great life and her great love passed forever from the earth. Yet it
+seems that through a mystery of transmigration, that light and life and
+love were destined soon to be reincarnated in a baby cousin, born in May,
+1819, called at first "the little May-flower," and through her earliest
+years watched and tended as a frail and delicate blossom of hope.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Birth of the Princess Victoria--Character of her Father--Question of the
+Succession to the Throne--Death of the Duke of Kent--Baptism of Victoria
+--Removal to Woolbrook Glen--Her first Escape from Sudden Death--Picture
+of Domestic Life--Anecdotes.
+
+
+After the loss of his wife, Prince Leopold left for a time his sad home
+of Claremont, and returned to the Continent, but came back some time in
+1819, to visit a beloved sister, married since his own bereavement, and
+become the mother of a little English girl, and for the second time a
+widow. Lovingly, though with a pang at his heart, the Prince bent over
+the cradle of this eight-months-old baby, who in her unconscious
+orphanage smiled into his kindly face, and though he thought sorrowfully
+of the little one whose eyes had never smiled into his, had never even
+opened upon life, he vowed then and there to the child of his bereaved
+sister, the devoted love, the help, sympathy, and guidance which never
+failed her while he lived.
+
+This baby girl was the daughter of the Duke of Kent and of the Princess
+Victoire Marie Louise of Saxe-Coburg Saalfield, widow of Prince Charles
+of Leiningen. Edward, Duke of Kent, was the fourth and altogether the
+best son of George III. Making all allowance for the exaggeration of
+loyal biographers, I should say he was an amiable, able, and upright man,
+generous and charitable to a remarkable degree, for a royal Prince of
+that time--perhaps too much so, for he kept himself poor and died poor.
+He was not a favorite with his royal parents, who seem to have denied him
+reasonable assistance, while lavishing large sums on his spendthrift
+brother, the Prince of Wales. George was like the prodigal son of
+Scripture, except that he never repented--Edward like the virtuous son,
+except that he never complained.
+
+On the death of the Princess Charlotte the Duke of York had become heir-
+presumptive to the throne. He had no children, and the Duke of Clarence,
+third son of George III., was therefore next in succession. He married in
+the same year as his brother of Kent, and to him also a little daughter
+was born, who, had she lived, would have finally succeeded to the throne
+instead of Victoria. But the poor little Princess stayed but a little
+while to flatter or disappoint royal hopes. She looked timidly out upon
+life, with all its regal possibilities, and went away untempted. Still
+the Duchess of Clarence (afterwards Queen Adelaide) might yet be the
+happy mother of a Prince, or Princess Royal, and there were so many
+probabilities against the accession of the Duke of Kent's baby to the
+throne that people smiled when, holding her in his arms, the proud father
+would say, in a spirit of prophecy, "Look at her well!--she will yet be
+Queen of England."
+
+One rainy afternoon the Duke stayed out late, walking in the grounds, and
+came in with wet feet. He was urged to change his boots and stockings,
+but his pretty baby, laughing and crowing on her mother's knee, was too
+much for him; he took her in his arms and played with her till the fatal
+chill struck him. He soon took to his bed, which he never left. He had
+inflammation of the lungs, and a country doctor, which last took from him
+one hundred and twenty ounces of blood. Then, as he grew no better, a
+great London physician was called in, but he said it was too late to save
+the illustrious patient; that if he had had charge of the case at first,
+he would have "bled more freely." Such was the medical system of sixty
+years ago.
+
+The Duke of Kent's death brought his unconscious baby's feet a step--just
+his grave's width--nearer the throne; but it was not till many years
+later--till after the death of her kindly uncle of York, and her "fine
+gentleman" uncle, George IV., and the accession of her rough sailor-
+uncle, the Duke of Clarence, William IV., an old man, and legally
+considered childless--that the Princess Victoria was confidently regarded
+as the coming sovereign, and that the momentous truth was revealed to
+her. She was twelve years old before any clear intimation had been
+allowed to reach her of the exceptional grandeur of her destiny. Till
+then she did not know that she was especially an object of national love
+and hope, or especially great or fortunate. She knew that she was a
+"Royal Highness," but she knew also, the wise child!--that since the
+Guelphs came over to rule the English, Royal Highnesses had been more
+plentiful than popular; she knew that she was obliged to wear, most of
+the time, very plain cotton gowns and straw hats, and to learn a lot of
+tiresome things, and that she was kept on short allowance of pin-money
+and ponies.
+
+The wise Duchess of Kent certainly guarded her with the most jealous care
+from all premature realization of the splendid part she might have to
+play in the world's history, as a hope too intoxicating, or a
+responsibility too heavy, for the heart and mind of a sensitive child.
+
+I wonder if her Serene Highness kept fond motherly records of the
+babyhood and childhood of the Queen? If so, what a rich mine it would be
+for a poor bewildered biographer like me, required to make my foundation
+bricks with only a few golden bits of straw. I have searched the
+chronicles of the writers of that time; I have questioned loyal old
+people, but have found or gained little that is novel, or peculiarly
+interesting.
+
+Victoria was born in the sombre but picturesque old palace of Kensington,
+on May 24, 1819, and on the 24th of the following June was baptized with
+great pomp out of the splendid gold font, brought from the Tower, by the
+Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by the Bishop of London. Her sponsors
+were the Prince Regent and the Emperor of Russia (the last represented by
+the Duke of York), the Queen Dowager of Würtemburg (represented by the
+Princess Augusta) and the Duchess Dowager of Coburg (represented by the
+Duchess Dowager of Gloucester), and her names were _Alexandrina
+Victoria_, the first in honor of the Emperor Alexander of Russia. She
+came awfully near being Alexandrina Georgiana, but the Prince Regent, at
+the last moment, declared that the name of Georgiana should be second to
+no other; then added, "Give her her mother's name--after that of the
+Emperor." The Queen afterwards decided that her mother's name should be
+second to no other. Yet as a child she was often called "little Drina."
+
+The baby's first move from her stately birthplace was to a lovely country
+residence called Woolbrook Glen, near Sidmouth. Here Victoria had the
+first of those remarkable narrow escapes from sudden and violent death
+which have almost seemed to prove that she bears a "charmed life." A boy
+was shooting sparrows in vicinity of the house, and a charge from his
+carelessly-handled gun pierced the window by which the nurse was sitting,
+with the little Princess in her arms. It is stated that the shot passed
+frightfully near the head of the child. But she was as happily
+unconscious of the deadly peril she had been in as, a few months later,
+she was of the sad loss she sustained in the death of her father, who was
+laid away with the other Guelphs in the Windsor Royal Vault, never again
+to throne his little "Queen" in his loyal, loving arms.
+
+The Princess Victoria seems to have been always ready for play, dearly
+loving a romp. One of the earliest mentions I find of her is in the
+correspondence of Bishop Wilberforce. After stating that he had been
+summoned to the presence of the Duchess of Kent, he says: "She received
+me with her fine, animated child on the floor by her side busy with its
+playthings, of which I soon became one."
+
+This little domestic picture gives a glimpse of the tender intimacy, the
+constant companionship of this noble mother with her child. It is stated
+that, unlike most mothers in high life, the Duchess nursed this
+illustrious child at her own breast, and so mingled her life with its
+life that nothing thenceforth could divide them. The wee Princess passed
+happily through the perils of infantile ailments. She cut her teeth as
+easily as most children, with the help of her gold-mounted coral--and
+very nice teeth they were, though a little too prominent according to the
+early pictures. If the infant Prince Albert reminded his grandmamma of a
+"weasel," his "pretty cousin" might have suggested to her a squirrel by
+"a little something about the mouth."
+
+An old newspaper writer gave a rather rapturous and pompous account of
+the Princess Victoria when she was about three years old. He says:
+"Passing through Kensington Gardens a few days since, I observed at some
+distance a party consisting of several ladies, a young child, and two
+men-servants, having in charge a donkey, gayly caparisoned with blue
+ribbons, and accoutred for the use of the infant." He soon ascertained
+that the party was the Duchess of Kent and her daughter, the Princess
+Feodore of Leiningen, and the Princess Alexandrina Victoria. On his
+approaching them the little one replied to his "respectful recognition"
+with a pleasant "good-morning," and he noted that she was equally polite
+to all who politely greeted her--truly one "to the manner born." This
+writer adds: "Her Royal Highness is remarkably beautiful, and her gay and
+animated countenance bespeaks perfect health and good temper. Her
+complexion is excessively fair, her eyes large and expressive, and her
+cheeks blooming. She bears a striking resemblance to her royal father."
+
+A glimpse which Leigh Hunt gives of his little liege lady, as she
+appeared to him for the first time in Kensington Gardens, is interesting,
+as revealing the child's affectionate disposition. "She was coming up a
+cross-path from the Bayswater Gate, with a little girl of her own age by
+her side, whose hand she was holding as though she loved her." And why
+not, Mr. Poet? Princesses, especially Princesses of the bread-and-butter
+age, are as susceptible to joys of sympathy and companionship as any of
+us--untitled poets and title-contemning Republicans.
+
+Lord Albemarle, in his autobiography, speaks of watching, in an idle
+hour, from the windows of the old palace, "the movements of a bright,
+pretty little girl, seven years of age, engaged in watering the plants
+immediately under the window. It was amusing to see how impartially she
+divided the contents of the watering-pot between the flowers and her own
+little feet. Her simple but becoming dress--a large straw hat and a white
+cotton gown--contrasted favorably with the gorgeous apparel now worn by
+the little damsels of the rising generation. A colored fichu round the
+neck was the only ornament she wore. The young lady I am describing was
+the Princess Victoria, now our Gracious Sovereign."
+
+Queen Victoria dressed her own children in the same simple style, voted
+quaint and old-fashioned by a later generation. I heard long ago a story
+of a fashionable lady from some provincial town taking a morning walk in
+Windsor Park, in the wild hope of a glimpse of royalty, and meeting a
+lady and gentleman, accompanied only by two or three children, and all so
+plainly dressed that she merely glanced at them as they passed. Some
+distance further she walked in her eager quest, when she met an old
+Scotch gardener, of whom she asked if there was any chance of her
+encountering the Queen anywhere on the domain. "Weel, ye maun, turn back
+and rin a good bit, for you've passed her _Mawjesty_, the Prince, and the
+Royal bairns."
+
+Ah, wasn't she spited as she looked back and saw the joyous family party
+in the dim distance, and realized what she had lost in not indulging
+herself in a good long British stare, and what a sin she had committed in
+not making a loyal British obeisance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Victoria's early Education--Anecdote--Routine of Life at Kensington
+Palace--Character and Circumstances of the Duchess of Kent--Anecdote--
+Simple Mode of Life--Visits.
+
+
+Queen Victoria tells little of her childhood, but speaks of it as rather
+"dull." It seems, however, to have never been empty or idle. All her
+moments were golden--for study, or for work, or healthful exercise and
+play. She was taught, and perhaps was inclined, to waste no time, and to
+be careful not to cause others to waste it. A dear English friend
+contributes the following anecdote, slight, but very significant,
+obtained long ago from a lady whose young daughters, then at school at
+Hammersmith, had the same writing-master as the Princess Victoria: "Of
+course," says my friend, "every incident connected with the little
+Princess was interesting to the school-girls, and all that this master (I
+think his name was Steward) had to tell went to prove her a kind-hearted
+and considerate child.
+
+"She always mentioned to him in advance the days on which she would not
+require a lesson, saying: 'I thought, perhaps, you would like to know.'
+Sometimes she would say, 'We are going to Windsor to see Uncle King,' or
+she would name some other important engagement. By 'Uncle King' she meant
+George IV. Mr. Steward, of course, availed himself of the liberty
+suggested by the little Princess, then about eight years old, by whose
+thoughtful kindness he was saved much time and trouble."
+
+Lord Campbell, speaking of the Princess as a little girl, says: "She
+seems in good health, and appears lively and good-humored." It may be
+that the good-humor was, in great part, the result of the good health.
+
+The Princess was brought up after the wisest, because most simple, system
+of healthful living: perfect regularity in the hours of eating, sleeping,
+and exercise; much life in the open air, and the least possible
+excitement.
+
+She was taught to respect her own constitution as well as that of the
+British Government, and to reverence the laws of health as the laws of
+God.
+
+An account which I judge to be authoritative of the daily routine of the
+family life in Kensington, runs thus: "Breakfast at 8 o'clock in summer,
+the Princess Victoria having her bread and milk and fruit put on a little
+table by her mother's side. After breakfast the Princess Feodore studied
+with her governess, and the Princess Victoria went out for an hour's walk
+or drive. From 10 to 12 her mother instructed her, after which she could
+amuse herself by running through the suite of rooms which extended round
+two sides of the palace, and in which were many of her toys. At 2 a plain
+dinner, while her mother took her luncheon. Lessons again till 4; then
+would come a visit or drive, and after that a walk or donkey ride in the
+gardens. At the time of her mother's dinner the Princess had her supper,
+still at the side of the Duchess; then, after playing with her nurse
+(Mrs. Brock, whom she called 'dear, dear Boppy'), she would join the
+party at dessert, and at 9 she would retire to her bed, which was placed
+at the side of her mother's."
+
+We see regular study, regular exercise, simple food, plenty of outdoor
+air, plenty of play, plenty of sleep. It seems that when this admirable
+mother laid her child away from her own breast, it was only to lay it on
+that of Nature, and very close has Victoria, with all her state and
+grandeur, kept to the heart of the great all-mother ever since.
+
+The Duchess of Kent was left not only with very limited means for a lady
+of her station, but also burdened by her husband's debts, which, being a
+woman with a fine sense of honor, she felt herself obliged to discharge,
+or at least to reduce as far and fast as possible. Had it not been for
+help from her generous brother, Leopold, she could hardly have afforded
+for her daughter the full and fitting education she received. So, had not
+her taste and her sense of duty towards her child inclined her to a life
+of quiet and retirement, the lack of fortune would have constrained her
+to live simply and modestly. As it was, privacy was the rule in the life
+of the accomplished Duchess, still young and beautiful, and in that of
+her little shadow; very seldom did they appear at Court, or in any gay
+Court circle; so, at the time of her accession to the throne, Victoria
+might almost have been a fairy-princess, emerging from some enchanted
+dell in Windsor forest, or a water-nymph evoked from the Serpentine in
+Kensington Gardens by some modern Merlin, for all the world at large--the
+world beyond her kingdom at least--knew of her young years, of her
+character and disposition. Now few witnesses are left anywhere of her
+fair happy childhood, or even of her girlhood, which was like a silvery
+crescent, holding the dim promise of full-orbed womanhood and Queenhood.
+
+As the Princess grew older, she found loving and helpful companionship in
+her half-brother and sister, Prince Charles and the Princess Feodore of
+Leiningen, the three children and their mother forming a close family
+union, which years and separations and changes of fortune never
+destroyed. They are all gone from her now; the Queen, as daughter and
+sister, stands alone.
+
+A kind friend and a well-known English writer, F. Aiken Kortright, for
+many years a resident of Kensington, tells some pleasant little local
+stories of the Princess Victoria. She says: "In her childhood the
+Princess Victoria was frequently seen in a little carriage, drawn over
+the gravel-walks of the then rural Kensington Gardens, accompanied by her
+elder and half-sister, the Princess Feodore, and attended by a single
+servant. Many elderly people still remember the extreme simplicity of the
+child's attire, and the quiet and unpretentious appearance and manners of
+her sister, who was one day seen to stop the tiny carriage to indulge the
+fancy of an unknown little girl by allowing her to kiss her future
+Queen."
+
+That "unknown little girl" was an elder sister of Miss Kortright. My
+friend also says that the Duchess of Kent and her daughters frequently on
+summer afternoons took tea on the lawn, "in sight of admiring
+promenaders, with a degree of publicity which now sounds fabulous."
+
+It was then safe and agreeable for that quiet, refined family, only
+because the London "Rough"--that ugly, unwholesome, fungous growth on the
+fine old oak of English character--had not made his unwelcome appearance
+in all the public parks of the metropolis. Our friend also states that so
+simple and little-girlish was the Princess in her ways that, later on,
+she was known to go with her mother or sister to a Kensington milliner's
+to buy a hat, stay to have it trimmed, and then carry it (or more likely
+the old one) home in her hand. I should like to see a little Miss
+Vanderbilt do a thing of that kind!
+
+The Kents and Leiningens--if I may speak so familiarly of Royal and
+Serene Highnesses--when away from the quiet home in Kensington, spent
+much time at lovely Claremont as guests of the dear brother and Uncle
+Leopold. They seem also to have travelled a good deal in England,
+visiting watering-places and in houses of the nobility, but never to have
+gone over to the Continent. The Duchess probably felt that the precious
+life which she held in trust for the people of England might possibly be
+endangered by too long journeys, or by changes of climate; but what it
+cost to the true German woman to so long exile herself from her old home
+and her kindred none ever knew--at least none among her husband's
+unsympathetic family--for she was, as a Princess, too proud to complain;
+as a mother, cheerful in her devotion and self-abnegation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Queen-making not a Light Task--Admirable Discipline of the Duchess of
+Kent--Foundation of the Character and Habits of the future Queen--Curious
+Extract from a Letter by her Grandmamma--A Children's Ball given by
+George IV. to the little Queen of Portugal--A Funny Mishap--Death of
+George IV.--Character of his Successor--Victoria's first appearance at a
+Drawing-room--Her absence from the Coronation of William IV.
+
+
+Queen-making is not a light task. It is no fancywork for idle hours. It
+is the first difficult draft of a chapter, perhaps a whole volume, of
+national history.
+
+No woman ever undertook a more important labor than did the widowed
+Duchess of Kent, or carried it out with more faithfulness, if we may
+judge by results.
+
+The lack of fortune in the family was not an unmixed evil; perhaps it was
+even one of those disagreeable "blessings in disguise," which nobody
+welcomes, but which the wise profit by, as it caused the Duchess to
+impress upon her children, especially the child Victoria, the necessity
+of economy, and the safety and dignity which one always finds in living
+within one's income. Frugality, exactitude in business, faithfulness to
+all engagements, great or small, punctuality, that economy of time, are
+usually set down among the minor moralities of life, more humdrum than
+heroic; but under how many circumstances and conditions do they reveal
+themselves as cardinal virtues, as things on which depend the comfort and
+dignity of life! It seems that these things were so impressed on the mind
+and heart of the young Victoria by her careful, methodical German mother,
+that they became a part of her conscience, entered so deeply into the
+rule of her life that no after-condition of wealth, or luxury, or
+sovereign independence; no natural desire for ease or pleasure; no
+passion of love or grief; no possible exigencies of imperial state have
+been able to overcome or set them aside. The danger is that such rigid
+principles, such systematic habits, adopted in youth, may in age become,
+from being the ministers of one's will, the tyrants of one's life.
+
+It seems to be somewhat so in the case of the Queen, for I hear it said
+that the sun, the moon, and the tides are scarcely more punctual and
+regular in their rounds and mighty offices, in their coming and going,
+than she in the daily routine of her domestic and state duties and
+frequent journeyings; and that the laws of the Medes and Persians are as
+naught in inexorableness and inflexibility to the rules and regulations
+of Windsor and Balmoral.
+
+But the English people, even those directly inconvenienced at times by
+those unbending habits and irrevocable rules, have no right to find
+fault, for these be the right royal results of the admirable but somewhat
+unyouthful qualities they adored in the young Queen. They have no right
+to sneer because a place of honor is given in Her Majesty's household to
+that meddlesome, old-fashioned German country cousin, Economy; for did
+not they all rejoice in the early years of the reign to hear of this same
+dame being introduced by those clever managers, Prince Albert and Baron
+Stockmar, into the royal palaces, wherein she had not been seen for many
+a year?
+
+But to return to the little Princess. The Duchess, her mother, seems to
+have given her all needful change of air and scene, though always
+maintaining; habits of study, and an admirable system of mental and moral
+training; for the child's constitution seems to have strengthened year by
+year, and in spite of one or two serious attacks of illness, the
+foundation was laid of the robust health which, accompanied by rare
+courage and nerve, has since so marked and blessed her life. A writer of
+the time speaks of a visit paid by her and her mother to Windsor in 1829,
+when the child was about seven years old, and states that George IV., her
+"Uncle King," was delighted with her "charming manners."
+
+It was about this visit that her maternal grandmamma at Coburg wrote to
+her mamma: "I see by the English papers that Her Royal Highness the
+Duchess of Kent went on Virginia water with His Majesty. The little
+monkey must have pleased and amused him, she is such a pretty, clever
+child."
+
+To think of the great Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and
+Empress of India, being called "a little monkey"! Grandmammas will take
+such liberties. Three or four years later, according to that spicy and
+irreverent chronicler, Charles Greville, the little Princess was not
+pretty. But she was just entering on that ungracious period in which few
+little girls are comely to look upon, or comfortable to themselves.
+Greville saw her at a children's ball, given by the King in honor of his
+little guest, the child-Queen of Portugal, Donna Maria II., da Gloria,
+whom the King seated at his right hand, and was very attentive to.
+Greville says she was fine-looking and very finely dressed, "with a
+ribbon and order over her shoulder," and she must have seemed very grand
+to the other children while she sat by the King, but when she came to
+dance she "fell down and hurt her face, was frightened and bruised, and
+went away." Then he adds: "Our little Princess is a short, plain child,
+not so good-looking as the Portuguese. However, if Nature has not done so
+much, Fortune is likely to do a great deal more for her."
+
+Victoria did not know that, but like any other little girl she may,
+perhaps, have comforted herself by thinking, "Well, if I'm not so
+handsome and grand and smartly dressed as that Maria, I'm less awkward. I
+was able to keep my head and not lose my feet."
+
+As for her small Majesty of Portugal, she was at that time a Queen
+without a crown and without a kingdom. She had come all the way from
+Brazil to take her grandfather's throne, a little present from her
+father, Dom Pedro I., the rightful heir, but only to find the place
+filled by a wicked uncle, Don Miguel. She had a long fight with the
+usurper, her father coming over to help her, and finally ousted Miguel
+and got into that big, uneasy arm-chair, called a throne, where she
+continued to sit, though much shaken and heaved up and about by political
+convulsions, for some dozen years, when she found it best to step down
+and out.
+
+It is said she did not gain, but lost in beauty as she grew to womanhood;
+so finally the English Princess had the advantage of her in the matter of
+good looks even.
+
+King George IV., though he was fond of his amusing little niece, did not
+like to think of her as destined to rule in his place. He is said to have
+been much offended when, as he was proposing to give that ball, his chief
+favorite, a gay, Court lady, exclaimed: "Oh, do! it will be so nice to
+see the _two little Queens_ dancing together." Yet he disliked the
+Duchess of Kent for keeping the child as much as possible away from his
+disreputable Court, and educating her after her own ideas, and often
+threatened to use his power as King to deprive her of the little girl.
+The country would not have stood this, yet the Duchess must have suffered
+cruelly from fear of having her darling child taken from her by this
+crowned ogre, and shut up in the gloomy keep of his Castle at Windsor.
+But it was the Ogre-King who was taken, a little more than a year after
+the children's ball--and not a day too soon for his country's good--and
+his brother, the Duke of Clarence, reigned in his stead.
+
+William IV. had some heart, some frankness and honesty, but he was a
+bluff, rough sailor, and when excited, oaths of the hottest sort flew
+from his lips, like sparks from an anvil. Because of his roughness and
+profanity, and because, perhaps, of the fact of his surrounding himself
+with a lot of natural children, the Duchess was determined to persevere
+in her retirement from the Court circle, and in keeping her innocent
+little daughter out of its unwholesome atmosphere, as much as possible.
+She was, however, most friendly with Queen Adelaide, who, when her last
+child died, had written to her: "My children are dead, but yours lives,
+and she is mine too." The good woman meant this, and her fondness was
+returned by Victoria, who manifested for her to the last, filial
+affection and consideration.
+
+The first Drawing-room which the Princess attended was one given in honor
+of Her Majesty's birthday. She went with her mother and a suite of ladies
+and gentlemen in State carriages, escorted by a party of Life Guards. The
+Princess was on that occasion dressed entirely in materials of British
+manufacture, her frock being of English blonde, very simple and becoming.
+She stood at the left of her aunt, the Queen, and watched the splendid
+ceremony with great interest, while everybody watched her with greater
+interest. But if the presence of the "heir-presumptive to the throne"
+created a sensation at the Queen's Drawing-room, her absence from the
+King's coronation created more. Some said it was because a proper place
+in the procession--one next to the King and Queen--had not been assigned
+to her; others, that the Duchess had kept her away on account of her
+delicate health, and nobody knew exactly the truth of the matter. Perhaps
+the great state secret will be revealed some day with the identity of
+"Junius" and the "Man in the Iron Mask."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+King William jealous of Public Honors to Victoria--Anecdote--The unusual
+Studies of the Princess--Her Visits to the Isle of Wight--Laughable
+Incident at Wentworth House--Anecdote related by her Music-teacher--
+Unwholesome adulation of the Princess--Reflections upon the curious
+isolation of her Social Position--Extract from one of her later Letters.
+
+
+The indifference of the Duchess of Kent to the heavy pomps and heavier
+gayeties of his Court so offended his unmajestic Majesty, that he finally
+became decidedly inimical to the Duchess. Though he insisted on seeing
+the little Princess often, he did not like the English people to see too
+much of her, or to pay her and her mother too much honor. He objected to
+their little journeys, calling them "royal progresses," and by a special
+order put a stop to the "poppings," in the way of salutes, to the vessel
+which bore them to and from the Isle of Wight--a small piece of state-
+business for a King and his Council to be engaged in. The King's
+unpopular brother, the Duke of Cumberland, was also supposed to be
+unfriendly to the widow of a brother whom he had not loved, and to the
+child whom, according to that brother, he regarded from the first as an
+"intruder," and who certainly at the last, stood between His Royal
+Grossness and the throne--the throne which would have gone down under
+him. Yet, in spite of enmity and opposition from high quarters, and
+jealousy and harsh criticism from Court ministers and minions, the
+Duchess of Kent, who seems to have been a woman of immense firmness and
+resolution, kept on her way, rearing her daughter as she thought best,
+coming and going as she felt inclined.
+
+Victoria's governess was for many years the accomplished Baroness Lehzen,
+who had also been the chief instructress of her sister, Feodore. Until
+she was twelve years old, her masters were also German, and she is said
+to have spoken English with a German accent. After that time her
+teachers, in nearly all branches, were English. Miss Kortright tells me a
+little anecdote of the Princess when about twelve years old, related by
+one of these teachers. She had been reading in her classical history the
+story of Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi--how she proudly presented
+her sons to the ostentatious and much-bediamonded Roman dame, with the
+words, "These are _my_ jewels." "She should have said my _Cornelians_,"
+said the quick-witted little girl.
+
+Victoria was instructed in some things not in those days thought proper
+for young ladies to learn, but deemed necessary for a poor girl who was
+expected to do a man's work. She was well grounded in history, instructed
+in Latin--though she did not fancy it, and later, in the British
+Constitution, and in law and politics. Nor were light accomplishments
+neglected: in modern languages, in painting and music, she finally became
+singularly proficient. Gifted with a remarkably sweet voice and a correct
+ear, she could not well help being a charming singer, under her great
+master, Lablache. She danced well, rode well, and excelled in archery.
+
+As I said, the brave Duchess, as conscientious as independent, kept up
+the life of retirement from Court pomps and gayeties, and of alternate
+hard study and social recreation, which she thought best for her child.
+
+She quietly persevered in the "progresses" which annoyed the irascible
+and unreasonable old King, even visiting the Isle of Wight, though the
+royal big guns were forbidden to "pop" at sight of the royal standard,
+which waved over her, and the young hope of England. Perhaps
+recollections of those pleasant visits with her mother at Norris Castle
+have helped to render so dear the Queen's own beautiful sea-side home,
+Osborne House. I remember a pretty little story, told by a tourist, who
+happened to be stopping at the village of Brading during one of those
+visits to the lovely island. One afternoon he strolled into the old
+church-yard to search out the grave of Elizabeth Wallbridge, the sweet
+heroine of Leigh Richmond's beautiful religious story, "The Dairyman's
+Daughter." He found seated beside the mound a lady and a young girl, the
+latter reading aloud, in a full, melodious voice, the touching tale of
+the Christian maiden. The tourist turned away, and soon after was told by
+the sexton that those pilgrims to that humble grave were the Duchess of
+Kent and the Princess Victoria.
+
+I am told by a Yorkshire lady another story of the Princess, of not quite
+so serious a character. She was visiting with her mother, of course, at
+Wentworth House, the seat of Earl Fitzwilliam in Yorkshire, and while at
+that pleasant place delighted in running about by herself in the gardens
+and shrubberies. One wet morning, soon after her arrival, she was thus
+disporting herself, flitting from point to point, light-hearted and
+light-footed, when the old gardener, who did not then know her, seeing
+her about to descend a treacherous bit of ground from the terrace, called
+out, "Be careful, Miss; it's slape!"--a Yorkshire word for slippery. The
+incautious, but ever-curious Princess, turning her head, asked, "What's
+slape?" and the same instant her feet flew from under her, and she came
+down. The old gardener ran to lift her, saying, as he did so,
+"_That's_ slape, Miss."
+
+There is nothing remarkable, much less incredible, in these stories of
+the young Victoria, nor in the one related by her music-teacher, of how
+she once rebelled against so much practice, and how, on his telling her
+that there was no "royal road" in art, and that only by much practice
+could she become "mistress of the piano," she closed and locked the
+obnoxious instrument and put the key in her pocket, saying playfully,
+"Now you see there _is_ a royal way of becoming `mistress of the
+piano.'" But not so simple and natural and girlish are all the things
+told of the Queen's young days. Loyal English people have said to me,
+"You will find few stories of Her Majesty's childhood, but those few will
+all be good."
+
+Yes, too good. The chroniclers of forty and fifty years ago--the same in
+whose loyal eyes the fifteen children of George III. were all "children
+of light"--could find no words in which to paint their worship for this
+rising star of sovereignty. According to them, she was not only the pearl
+of Princesses for piety and propriety, for goodness and graciousness, but
+a marvel of unchildlike wisdom, a prodigy of cleverness and learning; in
+short, a purely perfect creature, loved of the angels to a degree
+perilous to the succession. The simplest little events of her daily life
+were twisted into something unnaturally significant, or unhealthily
+virtuous. If she was taken through a cotton-mill at Manchester, and asked
+a score or two of questions about the machinery and the strange processes
+of spinning and weaving, it was not childish curiosity--it was a love of
+knowledge, and a patriotic desire to encourage British manufactures.
+
+If she gave a few pennies to a blind beggar at Margate, the amiable act
+was heralded as one, of almost divine beneficence, and the beggar pitied,
+as never before, for his blindness. The poor man had not beheld the face
+of the "little angel" who dropped the coin into his greasy hat! If, full
+of "high spirits," she took long rides on a donkey at Ramsgate, and ran
+races with other children on the sands, it was a proof of the sweetest
+human condescension--the donkey's opinion not being taken.
+
+Of course all this is false, unwholesome sentiment, quite
+incomprehensible to nineteenth century Americans, though our great-
+grandfathers understood this sort of personal loyalty very well, and
+gloried in it, till George the Third drove them to the wall; and our
+great-grandmothers cherished it as a sacred religious principle till
+their tea was taxed. I dare say that if the truth could be got at, we
+should find that little Victoria was at times trying enough to mother,
+masters, and attendants; that she was occasionally passionate, perverse,
+and "pestering," like all children who have any great and positive
+elements in them. I dare say she was disposed, like any other "only
+child," to be self-willed and selfish, and that she required a fair
+amount of wholesome discipline, and that she got it. Had she been the
+prim and pious little precocity which some biographers have painted her,
+she would have died young, like the "Dairyman's Daughter"; we might have
+had an edifying tract, and England a revolution.
+
+One of her biographers speaks with a sort of ecstatic surprise of the
+fact that the Princess was "affable--even gay," and that she "laughed and
+chatted like other little girls." And yet she must early have perceived
+that she was not quite like other little girls, but set up and apart.
+Though reared with all the simplicity practicable for a Princess Royal,
+she must have been conscious of a magic circle drawn round her, of a
+barrier impalpable, but most real, which other children could not
+voluntarily overpass. She must have seen that they could not call out to
+her to "come and play!" that however shy she might feel, she must propose
+the game, or the romp, as later she had to propose marriage. She even was
+obliged to quarrel, if quarrel she did, all alone by herself. Any
+resistance on the part of her playmates would have been a small variety
+of high treason. She must sometimes, with her admirable good sense, have
+been wearied and disgusted by so much concession, conciliation, and
+consideration, and may have envied less fortunate or unfortunate mortals
+who can give and take hard knocks, for whom less is demanded, and of whom
+less is expected.
+
+She may have tired of her very name, with its grand prefixes and no
+affix, and longed to be Victoria Kent, or _Something_--Jones, Brown,
+or Robinson.
+
+She seems to have been a child of simple, homely tastes, for in 1842,
+when Queen, she writes to her Uncle Leopold from Claremont, where she is
+visiting, with her husband and little daughter: "This place brings back
+recollections of the happiest days of my otherwise dull childhood--days
+when I experienced such kindness from you, dearest uncle; 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."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The Princess opens the Victoria Park at Bath--Becoming used to Public
+Curiosity--Secret of her Destiny revealed to her--Royal Ball on her
+Thirteenth Birthday--At the Ascot Races--Picture by N. P. Willis--
+Anecdotes--Painful Scene at the King's last Birthday Dinner.
+
+
+When she was eleven years old, the Princess opened the Victoria Park at
+Bath. She began the opening business thus early, and has kept it up
+pretty diligently for fifty years--parks, expositions, colleges,
+exchanges, law courts, bridges, docks, art schools, and hospitals. Her
+sons and daughters are also kept busy at the same sort of work. Indeed
+these are almost the only openings for young men of the royal family for
+active service, now that crusades and invasions of France have gone out
+of fashion. It seems to me that the English people get up all sorts of
+opening and unveiling occasions in order to supply employment to their
+Princes and Princesses, who, I must say, never shirk such monotonous
+duties, however much they may be bothered and bored by them.
+
+Occasionally the Duchess of Kent and her daughter visited Brighton, and
+stopped in that grotesque palace of George IV., called the Pavilion. I
+have seen a picture of the demure little Princess, walking on the
+esplanade, with her mother, governesses, and gentlemen attendants, the
+whole elegant party and the great crowd of Brightonians following and
+staring at them, wearing the absurd costumes of half a century ago--the
+ladies, big bonnets, big mutton-leg sleeves, big collars, heelless
+slippers, laced over the instep; the gentlemen, short-waisted coats,
+enormous collars, preposterous neckties, and indescribably clumsy hats.
+
+By this time the Princess had learned to bear quietly and serenely, if
+not unconsciously, the gaze of hundreds of eyes, admiring or criticising.
+She knew that the time was probably coming when the hundreds would
+increase to thousands, and even millions--when the world would for her
+seem to be made up of eyes, like a peacock's tail. Small wonder that in
+her later years, especially since she has missed from her side the
+splendid figure which divided and justified the mighty multitudinous
+stare, this eternal observation, this insatiable curiosity has become
+infinitely wearisome to her.
+
+Several accounts have been given of the manner in which the great secret
+of her destiny was revealed to the Princess Victoria, and the manner in
+which it was received, but only one has the Queen's indorsement. This was
+contained in a letter, written long afterwards to Her Majesty by her dear
+old governess, the Baroness Lehzen, who states that when the Regency Bill
+(an act naming the Duchess of Kent as Regent, in case of the King dying
+before his niece obtained her majority) was before Parliament, it was
+thought that the time had come to make known to the Princess her true
+position. So after consulting with the Duchess, the Baroness placed a
+genealogical table in a historical book, which her pupil was reading.
+When the Princess came upon this paper, she said: "Why, I never saw that
+before." "It was not thought necessary you should see it," the Baroness
+replied. Then the young girl, examining the paper, said thoughtfully: "I
+see I am nearer the throne than I supposed." After some moments she
+resumed, with a sort of quaint solemnity: "Now many a child would boast,
+not knowing the difficulty. There is much splendor, but there is also
+much responsibility." "The Princess," says the Baroness, "having lifted
+up the forefinger of her right hand while she spoke, now 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 was the foundation of English grammar, and all the
+elegant expressions, and I learned it, as you wished it; but I understand
+all better now,' and the Princess again gave me her hand, repeating, 'I
+will be good.'"
+
+God heard the promise of the child of twelve years and held her to it,
+and has given her strength "as her day" to redeem it, all through the
+dazzling brightness and the depressing shadows, through the glory and the
+sorrow of her life, as a Queen and a woman.
+
+The Queen says that she "cried much" over the magnificent but difficult
+problem of her destiny, but the tears must have been April showers, for
+in those days she was accounted a bright, care-free little damsel, and
+was ever welcome as a sunbeam in the noblest houses of England--such as
+Eaton Hall, the seat of the Duke of Westminster; Wentworth House,
+belonging to Earl Fitzwilliam; Alton Towers, the country house of the
+Earl of Shrewsbury; and Chatsworth, the palace of the Duke of Devonshire,
+where such royal loyal honors were paid to her that she had a foretaste
+of the "splendor," without the "responsibility," of Queenhood.
+
+The King and Queen gave a brilliant ball in honor of "the thirteenth
+birthday of their beloved niece, the Princess Victoria," and somewhat
+later, the little royal lady appeared at a Drawing-room, when she is said
+to have charmed everybody by her sweet, childish dignity--a sort of
+quaint queenliness of manner and expression. She was likewise most
+satisfactory to the most religiously inclined of her subjects who were to
+be, in her mien and behavior when in the Royal Chapel of St. James, on
+the interesting occasion of her confirmation. She is said to have gone
+through the ceremony with "profound thoughtfulness and devout solemnity."
+
+The next glimpse I have of her is at a very different scene--the Ascot
+races. A brilliant American author, N. P. Willis, who then saw her for
+the first time, wrote: "In one of the intervals, I walked under the
+King's stand, and saw Her Majesty the Queen, and the young Princess
+Victoria, very distinctly. They were leaning over the railing listening
+to a ballad-singer, and seeming as much interested and amused as any
+simple country-folk could be. The Queen is undoubtedly the plainest woman
+in her dominions, but the Princess is much better-looking than any
+picture of her in the shops, and for the heir to such a crown as that of
+England, quite unnecessarily, pretty and interesting. She will be sold,
+poor thing! bartered away by those great-dealers in royal hearts, whose
+grand calculations will not be much consolation to her if she happens to
+have a taste of her own."
+
+Little did the wise American poet guess that, away in a little fairy
+principality of Deutschland, there was a beautiful young fairy prince,
+being reared by benevolent fairy godmother-grandmothers, especially to
+disprove all such doleful prophecies, and reverse the usual fate of
+pretty young Princesses in the case of the "little English mayflower."
+
+Greville relates a little incident which shows that the Princess, when
+between sixteen and seventeen, and almost in sight of the throne, was
+still amenable to discipline. He describes a reception of much pomp and
+ceremony, given to the Duchess and the Princess by the Mayor and other
+officers of the town of Burghley, followed by a great dinner, which "went
+off well," except that an awkward waiter, in a spasm of loyal excitement,
+emptied the contents of a pail of ice in the lap of the Duchess, which,
+though she took it coolly, "made a great bustle." I am afraid the
+Princess laughed. Then followed a magnificent ball, which was opened by
+the Princess, with Lord Exeter for a partner. After that one dance she
+"went to bed." Doubtless her good mother thought she had had fatigue and
+excitement enough for one day; but it must have been hard for such a
+dance-loving girl to take her quivering feet out of the ball-room so
+early, and for such a grand personage as she already was, just referred
+to in the Mayor's speech, as "destined to mount the throne of these
+realms," to be sent away like a child, to mount a solemn, beplumed four-
+poster, and to try to sleep, with that delicious dance-music still
+ringing in her ears.
+
+Greville also relates a sad Court story connected with the young
+Princess, and describes a scene which would be too painful for me to
+reproduce, except that it reveals, in a striking manner, Victoria's
+tender love for and close sympathy with her mother. It seems that the
+King's jealous hostility to the Duchess of Kent had grown with his decay,
+and strengthened with his senility, till at last it culminated in a sort
+of declaration of war at his own table. The account is given by Greville
+_second-hand_, and so, very likely, over-colored, though doubtless true
+in the main. The King invited the Duchess and Princess to Windsor to
+join in the celebration of his birthday, which proved to be his last.
+There was a dinner-party, called "private," but a hundred guests sat down
+to the table. The Duchess of Kent was given a place of honor on one side
+of the King, and opposite her sat the Princess Victoria. After dinner
+Queen Adelaide proposed "His Majesty's health and long life to him," to
+which that amiable monarch replied by a very remarkable speech. He began
+by saying that he hoped in God he might live nine months longer, when the
+Princess would be of age, and he could leave the royal authority in her
+hands and not in those of a Regent, in the person of a lady sitting near
+him, etc. Afterwards he said: "I have particularly to complain of the
+manner in which that young lady (the Princess Victoria) has been kept
+from my Court. She has been repeatedly kept from my Drawing-rooms, at
+which she ought always to have been present, but I am resolved that this
+shall not happen again. I would have _her_ know that I am _King_, and am
+determined to make my authority respected, and for the future I shall
+insist and command that the Princess do, upon all occasions, appear at my
+Court, as it is her duty to do."
+
+This pleasant and hospitable harangue, uttered in a loud voice and an
+excited manner, "produced a decided sensation." The whole company "were
+aghast." Queen Adelaide, who was amiable and well-bred, "looked in deep
+distress"; the young Princess burst into tears at the insult offered to
+her mother; but that mother sat calm and silent, very pale, but proud and
+erect--Duchess of Duchesses!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Victoria's first meeting with Prince Albert--She comes of Age--Ball in
+honor thereof--Illness of King William--His Death--His Habits and
+Character--The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor inform
+Victoria that she is Queen--Her beautiful bearing under the ordeal.
+
+
+In May, 1836, the Princess saw, for the first time, her cousins, Ernest
+and Albert, of Saxe-Coburg. These brothers, one eighteen and the other
+seventeen, are described as charming young fellows, well-bred and
+carefully educated, with high aims, good, true hearts, and frank, natural
+manners.
+
+In personal appearance they were very prepossessing. Ernest was handsome,
+and Albert more than handsome. They were much beloved by their Uncle
+Leopold, then King of Belgium, and soon endeared themselves to their Aunt
+Kent and their Cousin Victoria. They spent three weeks at Kensington in
+daily intercourse with their relatives, and with their father, the Duke
+of Coburg, were much _fêted_ by the royal family. They keenly enjoyed
+English society and sights, and learned something of English life and
+character, which to one of them, at least, proved afterwards useful.
+Indeed this admirable young Prince, Albert, seemed always learning and
+assimilating new facts and ideas. He had a soul athirst for knowledge.
+
+On May 24, 1837, the Princess Victoria came of age. She was awakened
+early by a matutinal serenade--a band of musicians piping and harping
+merrily under her bedroom windows. She received many presents and
+congratulatory visits, and had the pleasure of knowing that the day was
+observed as a grand holiday in London and throughout England. Boys were
+let out of school, and M.P.'s out of Parliament. At night the metropolis
+was "brilliantly illuminated"--at least so thought those poor, benighted,
+ante-electrical-light Londoners--and a grand state ball was given in St.
+James' Palace. Here, for the first time, the Princess took precedence of
+her mother, and we may believe she felt shy and awkward at such a
+reversal of the laws of nature and the habits of years. But doubtless the
+stately Duchess fell back without a sigh, except it were one of joy and
+gratitude that she had brought her darling on so far safely.
+
+This could hardly have been a very gay state ball, for their Majesties
+were both absent. The King had that very day been attacked with hayfever,
+and the Queen had dutifully stayed at home to nurse him. He rallied from
+this attack somewhat, but never was well again, and in the small hours of
+June 2d the sailor King died at Royal Windsor, royally enough, I believe,
+though he had never been a very royal figure or spirit. Of course after
+he was gone from his earthly kingdom, the most glowing eulogies were
+pronounced upon him in Parliament, in the newspapers, and in hundreds of
+pulpits. Even a year later, the Bishop of London, in his sermon at the
+Queen's coronation, lauded the late King for his "unfeigned religion,"
+and exhorted his "youthful successor" to "follow in his footsteps." Ah,
+if she had done so, I should not now be writing Her Majesty's Life!
+
+It must be that in a King a little religion goes a long way. The good
+Bishop and other loyal prelates must have known all about the Fitz-
+Clarences--those wild "olive branches about the table" of His Majesty;
+and they were doubtless aware of that little unfortunate habit of
+profanity, acquired on the high-seas, and scarcely becoming to the Head
+of the Church; but they, perhaps, considered that His Majesty swore as
+the sailor, not as the sovereign. He certainly made a good end, hearing
+many prayers, and joining in them as long as he was able, and devoutly
+receiving the communion; and what is better, manifesting some tender
+anxiety lest his faithful wife and patient nurse should do too much and
+grieve too much for him. When he saw her like to break down, he would
+say: "Bear up; bear up, Adelaide!" just like any other good husband.
+William was not a bad King, as Kings went in those days; he was,
+doubtless, an orthodox churchman, and we may believe he was a good
+Christian, from his charge to the new Bishop of Ely when he came to "kiss
+hands" on his preferment: "My lord, I do not wish to interfere in any way
+with your vote in Parliament, except on one subject--the Jews. I trust I
+may depend on your always voting against them!"
+
+When the solemn word went through the old Castle of Windsor, "The King is
+dead!" his most loyal ministers, civil and religious, added under their
+breath: "Long live the Queen!" and almost immediately the Archbishop of
+Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain left Windsor and travelled as fast as
+post-horses could carry them, to Kensington Palace, which they reached in
+the gray of the early dawn. Everybody was asleep, and they knocked and
+rang a long time before they could rouse the porter at the gate, who at
+last grumblingly admitted them. Then they had another siege in the court-
+yard; but at length the palace door yielded, and they were let into one
+of the lower rooms, "where," says Miss Wynn's account, "they seemed
+forgotten by everybody." They rang the bell, called a sleepy servant, and
+requested that the special attendant of the Princess Victoria should
+inform her Royal Highness that they desired an audience on "very
+important business." More delay, more ringing, more inquiries and
+directions. At last the attendant of the Princess came, and coolly stated
+that her Royal Mistress was "in such a sweet sleep she could not venture
+to disturb her." Then solemnly spoke up the Archbishop: "We are come on
+business of State, to _the Queen_, and even her sleep must give way." Lo
+it was out! The startled maid flew on her errand, and so effectually
+performed it, that Victoria, not daring to keep her visitors waiting
+longer, hurried into the room with only a shawl thrown over her night-
+gown, and her feet in slippers. She had flung off her night-cap (young
+ladies wore night-caps in those queer old times), and her long, light-
+brown hair was tumbling over her shoulders. So she came to receive
+the first homage of the Church and the State, and to be hailed "Queen!"
+and she was Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, of India and the mighty
+Colonies! It seems to me that the young girl must have believed herself
+at that moment only half awake, and still dreaming. The grand, new title,
+"Your Majesty," must have had a new sound, as addressed to her,--
+something strange and startling, though very likely she may have often
+said it over to herself, silently, to get used to it. The first kiss of
+absolute fealty on her little hand must have thrilled through her whole
+frame. Some accounts say that as full realization was forced upon her,
+she burst into tears; others dwell on her marvellous calm and self-
+possession. I prefer to believe in the tears, not only because the
+assumption of the "dangerous grandeur of sovereignty" was a solemn and
+tremendous matter for one so young, but because something of awe and
+sorrow on hearing of the eternal abdication of that sovereignty, by her
+rough but not to her unloving old uncle, was natural and womanly, and
+fitting. I believe that it has not been questioned that the first words
+of the QUEEN were addressed to the Primate, and that they were simply, "I
+beg your Grace to pray for me," which the Archbishop did, then and there.
+Doubtless, also, as related, the first act of her queenly life was the
+writing of a letter of condolence to Queen Adelaide, in which, after
+expressing her tender sympathy, she begged her "dear aunt" to remain at
+Windsor just as long as she might feel inclined. This letter she
+addressed to "Her Majesty, the Queen." Some one at hand reminded her that
+the King's widow was now only Queen Dowager. "I am quite aware of that,"
+replied Victoria, "but I will not be the first person to remind her of
+it." I cannot say how much I like that. Wonderful is the story told by
+many witnesses of the calmness and gentle dignity of Her Majesty, when a
+few hours later she met the high officers of the Church and State,
+Princes and Peers, received their oaths of allegiance and read her first
+speech from an improvised throne. The Royal Princes, the Dukes of
+Cumberland and Sussex, Her Majesty's uncles, were the first to be sworn,
+and Greville says: "As they knelt before her, swearing allegiance and
+kissing her hand, 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."
+
+When she first entered the room she had kissed these old uncles
+affectionately, walking toward the Duke of Sussex, who was very feeble.
+
+Greville says that she seemed rather bewildered at the multitude of men
+who came to kiss her hand and kneel to her, among them the conqueror of
+Napoleon--soldier of soldiers--_the_ Duke!--but that she did not make any
+difference in her manner, or show any especial respect, or condescension
+in her countenance to any individual, not even to the Premier, Lord
+Melbourne, for whom she was known to have a great liking, and who was
+long her trusted friend and favorite Minister.
+
+The Queen was also called upon to take an oath, which was for "the
+security of the Church of Scotland." This she has most faithfully kept;
+indeed, she has now and then been reproached by jealous champions of the
+English Establishment for undue graciousness towards the Kirk and its
+ministers.
+
+For this grand but solemn ceremony at Kensington--rendered the more
+solemn by the fact that while it was going on the great bell of St.
+Paul's was tolling for the dead King,--the young Queen was dressed very
+simply, in mourning.
+
+She seems to have thought of everything, for she sent for Lord Albemarle,
+and after reminding him that according to law and precedent she must be
+proclaimed the next morning at 10 o'clock, from a certain window of St.
+James' Palace, requested him to provide for her a suitable conveyance and
+escort. She then bowed gravely and graciously to the Princes, Archbishops
+and Cabinet Ministers, and left the room, as she had entered it--alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The last day of Victoria's real girlhood--Proclaimed Queen from St.
+James' Palace--She holds her first Privy Council--Comments upon her
+deportment by eye-witnesses--Fruits of her mother's care and training.
+
+
+It seems to me that the momentous day just described was the last of
+Victoria's real girlhood; that premature womanhood was thrust upon her
+with all the power, grandeur, and state of a Queen Regnant. I wonder if,
+weary and nervously exhausted as she must have been, she slept much, when
+at last she went to bed, probably no longer in her mother's room. I
+wonder if she did not think, with a sort of fearsome thrill that when the
+summer sun faded from her sight, it was only to travel all night,
+lighting her vast dominions and her uncounted millions of subjects; and
+that, like the splendor of that sun, had become her life--hers, the
+little maiden's, but just emerging from the shadow of seclusion, and from
+her mother's protecting care and wise authority, and stepping out into
+the world by herself!
+
+The next day she went in state to St. James Palace, accompanied by great
+lords and ladies, and escorted by squadrons of the Life Guards and Blues,
+and was formally proclaimed from the window of the Presence Chamber,
+looking out on the court-yard. A Court chronicle states that Her Majesty
+wore a black silk dress and a little black chip bonnet, and that she
+looked paler than usual. Miss Martineau, speaking of the scene, says:
+"There stood the young creature, in simplest mourning, her sleek bands of
+brown hair as plain as her dress. The tears ran down her cheeks, as Lord
+Melbourne, standing by her side, presented her to the people as their
+Sovereign. ... In the upper part of the face she is really pretty, and
+with an ingenuous, sincere air which seems full of promise."
+
+After the ceremony of proclamation was over, the "little Queen" remained
+for a few moments at the window, bowing and smiling through her tears at
+that friendly and enthusiastic crowd of her subjects, and listening to
+the National Anthem played for the first time for her, then retired, with
+her mother, who had not been "prominent" during the scene, but who had
+been observed "to watch her daughter with great anxiety."
+
+At noon the Queen held a Privy Council, at which it was said, "She
+presided with as much ease as though she had been doing nothing else all
+her life." At 1 P.M. she returned to Kensington Palace, there to remain
+in retirement till after the funeral of King William.
+
+It is certain that the behavior of this girl-queen on these first two
+days of her reign "confounded the doctors" of the Church and State.
+Greville, who never praises except when praise is wrung out of him, can
+hardly say enough of her grace and graciousness, calmness and self-
+possession. He says, also, that her "agreeable expression, with her
+youth, inspire an excessive interest in all who approach her, and which,"
+he is condescending enough to add, "I can't help feeling myself." He
+quotes Peel as saying he was "amazed at her manner and behavior; at her
+apparent deep sense of her situation, her modesty, and at the same time
+her firmness. She appeared to be awed, but not daunted."
+
+The Duke of Wellington paid a similar tribute to her courage.
+
+Now, if these great men did not greatly idealize her, under the double
+glamour of gallantry and loyalty, Victoria was a most extraordinary young
+woman. A few days before the death of the King, Greville wrote: "What
+renders speculation so easy and events so uncertain is the absolute
+ignorance of everybody of the character, disposition, and capacity of the
+Princess. She has been kept in such jealous seclusion by her mother
+(never having slept out of her bedroom, nor been alone with anybody but
+herself and, the Baroness Lehzen), that not one of her acquaintance, none
+of the attendants at Kensington, not even the Duchess of Northumberland,
+her governess, can have any idea what she is, or what she promises to
+be." The first day of Victoria's accession he writes: "She appears to act
+with every sort of good taste and good feeling, as well as good sense,
+and nothing can be more favorable than the impression she has made, and
+nothing can promise better than her manner and conduct do... William IV.
+coming to the throne at the mature age of sixty-five, was so excited by
+the exaltation that he nearly went mad... The young Queen, who might well
+be either dazzled or confounded with the grandeur and novelty of her
+situation, seems neither the one nor the other, and behaves with a
+propriety and decorum beyond her years."
+
+Doubtless nature was kind to Victoria in the elements of character, but
+she must have owed very much of this courage, calmness, modesty,
+simplicity, candor, and sterling good sense to the peculiar, systematic
+training, the precept and example of her mother, the much-criticised
+Duchess of Kent, so unpopular at the Court of the late King, and whom Mr.
+Greville had by no means delighted to honor. Ah, the good, brave Duchess
+had her reward for all her years of patient exile, all her loving labor
+and watchful care, and rich compensation for all criticisms,
+misrepresentations, and fault-finding, that June afternoon, the day of
+the Proclamation, when she rode from the Palace of St. James to
+Kensington with her daughter, who had behaved so well--her daughter and
+her _Queen!_
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+WOMANHOOD AND QUEENHOOD.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+The sovereignty of England and Hanover severed forever--Funeral of King
+William IV. at Windsor--The Queen and her household remove to Buckingham
+Palace--She dissolves Parliament--Glowing account of the scene by a
+contemporary Journal--Charles Sumner a spectator--His eulogy of the
+Queen's reading.
+
+
+Ever since the accession to the throne of Great Britain of the House of
+Brunswick, the Kings of England had also been Kings of Hanover. To carry
+on the two branches of the royal business simultaneously must have been a
+little difficult, at least perplexing. It was like riding a "two-horse
+act," with a wide space between the horses, and a wide difference in
+their size. But the Salic law prevailed in that little kingdom over
+there; so its Crown now gently devolved on the head of the male heir-
+apparent, the Duke of Cumberland, and the quaint old principality parted
+company with England forever. That is what Her Majesty, Victoria, got, or
+rather lost, by being a woman. A day or two after her accession, King
+Ernest called at Kensington Palace to take leave of the Queen, and she
+dutifully kissed her uncle and brother-sovereign, and wished him God-
+speed and the Hanoverians joy.
+
+There is no King and no kingdom of Hanover now. When Kaiser William was
+consolidating so many German principalities into his grand empire, gaily
+singing the refrain of the song of the old sexton, "_I gather them in!
+I gather them in!_" he took Hanover, and it has remained under the
+wing of the great Prussian eagle ever since. It is said that the last
+King made a gallant resistance, riding into battle at the head of his
+troops, although he was blind--too blind, perhaps, to see his own
+weakness. When his throne was taken out from under him, he still clung to
+the royal title, but his son is known only as the Duke of Cumberland.
+This Prince, like other small German Princes, made a great outcry against
+the Kaiser's confiscations, but the inexorable old man still went on
+piecing an imperial table-cover out of pocket-handkerchiefs.
+
+The young Queen's new Household was considered a very magnificent and
+unexceptionable one--principally for the rank and character and personal
+attractions of the ladies in attendance, chief among whom, for beauty and
+stateliness, was the famous Duchess of Sutherland--certainly one of the
+most superb women in England, or anywhere else, even at an age when most
+women are "falling off," and when she herself was a grandmother.
+
+The funeral of King William took place at Windsor in due time, and with
+all due pomp and ceremony. After lying in state in the splendid Waterloo
+chamber, under a gorgeous purple pall, several crowns, and other royal
+insignia, he was borne to St. George's Chapel, followed by Prelates,
+Peers, and all the Ministers of State, and a solemn funeral service was
+performed. But what spoke better for him than all these things was the
+quiet weeping of a good woman up in the Royal Closet, half hidden by the
+sombre curtains, who looked and listened to the last, and saw her husband
+let down into the Royal Vault, where, in the darkness, his--their baby-
+girl awaited him, that Princess with the short life and the long name--
+poor little Elizabeth Georgina Adelando, whom the childless Queen once
+hoped to hear hailed "Elizabeth Second of England."
+
+In midsummer the Queen, the Duchess of Kent, and their grand Household
+moved from Kensington to Buckingham Palace, then new, and an elegant and
+luxurious royal residence internally, but externally neither beautiful
+nor imposing. But with the exception of Windsor Castle, none of the
+English Royal Palaces can be pointed to as models of architectural
+beauty, or even sumptuous appointments. The palaces of some of our
+Railway Kings more than rival them in some respects, while those of many
+of the English nobility are richer in art-treasures and grander in
+appearance. Kensington Palace was not beautiful, but it was picturesque
+and historic, which was more than could be said of any of the Georgian
+structures; there was about it an odor of old royalty, of poetry and
+romance. The literature and the beauty of Queen Anne's reign were
+especially associated with it. Queen Victoria was, when she left it, at
+an age when memories count for little, and doubtless the flitting "_out
+of the old house into the new_" was effected merrily enough; but long
+afterwards her orphaned and widowed heart must often have gone back
+tenderly and yearningly to the scene of many tranquilly happy years with
+her mother, and of that first little season of companionship with her
+cousin Albert.
+
+Hardly had she got unpacked and settled in her new home when she had to
+go through a great parade and ceremony. She went in state to dissolve
+Parliament. The weather was fine and the whole route from Buckingham
+Palace to the Parliament House was lined with people, shouting and
+cheering as the magnificent procession and that brilliant young figure
+passed slowly along. A London journal of the time gave the following
+glowing account of her as she appeared in the House of Lords: "At 20
+minutes to 3 precisely, Her Majesty, preceded by the heralds and attended
+by the great officers of state, entered the House--all the Peers and
+Peeresses, who had risen at the flourish of the trumpets, remaining
+standing. Her Majesty was attired in a splendid white satin robe, with
+the ribbon of the Garter crossing her shoulder and a magnificent tiara of
+diamonds on her head, and wore a necklace and a stomacher of large and
+costly brilliants. Having ascended the throne, the royal mantle of
+crimson velvet was placed on Her Majesty's shoulders by the Lords in
+waiting." And this was the same little girl who, six years before, had
+bought her own straw hat and carried it home in her hand! I wonder if her
+own mother did not at that moment have difficulty in believing that
+radiant and royal creature was indeed her little Victoria!
+
+The account continues: "Her Majesty, on taking her seat, appeared to be
+deeply moved at the novel and important position in which she was placed,
+the eyes of the assembled nobility, both male and female, being riveted
+on her person." I would have wagered a good deal that it was the 'female'
+eyes that she felt most piercingly. Then it goes on: "Her emotion was
+plainly discernible in the heavings of her bosom, and the brilliancy of
+her diamond stomacher, which sparkled out like the sun on the swell of
+the ocean as the billows rise and fall." So disconcerted was she, it
+seems, by all this silent, intense observation, that she forgot, nicely
+seated as she was, that all those Peers and Peeresses were standing, till
+she was reminded of it by Lord Melbourne, who stood close at her side.
+Then she graciously inclined her head, and said in rather a low tone, 'My
+Lords, be seated!' and they sat, and eke their wives and daughters.
+
+"She had regained her self-possession when she came to read her speech,
+and her voice also, for it was heard all over the great chamber." And it
+is added: "Her demeanor was characterized by much grace and modest self-
+possession."
+
+Among the spectators of this rare royal pageant was an American, and a
+stiff republican, a young man from Boston, called Charles Sumner. He was
+a scholar, and scholar-like, undazzled by diamonds, admired most Her
+Majesty's reading. In a letter to a friend he wrote: "I was astonished
+and delighted. Her voice is sweet and finely modulated, and she
+pronounced every word distinctly, and with a just regard to its meaning.
+I think I never heard anything better read in my life than her speech,
+and I could but respond to Lord Fitz-William's remark to me when the
+ceremony was over, 'How beautifully she performs!'" How strange it now
+seems to think of that slight girl of eighteen coming in upon that great
+assembly of legislators, many of them gray and bald, and pompous and
+portly, and gravely telling them that they might go home!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Comments upon the young Queen by a contemporaneous writer in
+_Blackwood_--A new Throne erected for her in Buckingham Palace--A
+touching Anecdote related by the Duke of Wellington--The Queen insists on
+paying her Father's Debts--The romantic and passionate interest she
+evoked--Her mad lover--Attempts upon her life--She takes possession of
+Windsor Castle.
+
+
+A writer in _Blackwood_, speaking of the Queen about this time,
+said: "She is 'winning golden opinions from all sorts of people' by her
+affability, the grace of her manners, and her prettiness. She is
+excessively like the Brunswicks and not like the Coburgs. So much the
+more in her favor. The memory of George III. is not yet passed away, and
+the people are glad to see his calm, honest, and English physiognomy
+renewed in his granddaughter."
+
+Her Majesty's likeness to the obstinate but conscientious old king, whose
+honest face is fast fading quite away from old English half-crowns and
+golden guineas, has grown with her years.
+
+The same writer, speaking of her personal appearance, says: "She is low
+of stature, but well formed; her hair the darkest shade of flaxen, and
+her eyes large and light-blue." A friend who saw her frequently at the
+time of her accession, said to me the other day: "It is a great mistake
+to suppose that the Queen owed all the charming portraits which were
+drawn of her at this time, to the fortunate accident of her birth and
+destiny. She was really a very lovely girl, with a fine, delicate, rose-
+bloom complexion, large blue eyes, a fair, broad brow, and an expression
+of peculiar candor and innocence."
+
+A few days later there was a sensation in Buckingham Palace, at the
+setting up in the Throne-room of a very magnificent new piece of
+furniture--a throne of the latest English fashion, but gorgeous enough to
+have served for the Queen of Sheba, Zenobia, Cleopatra, or Semiramis. It
+was all crimson velvet and silk, with any amount of gold embroideries,
+gold lace, gold fringe, ropes, and tassels. The gay young Queen tried it,
+and said it would do; that she had never sat on a more comfortable throne
+in all her life.
+
+Two stories of the young Queen have touched me especially--one was
+related by the Duke of Wellington. A court-martial death sentence was
+presented by him to her, to be signed. She shrank from the dreadful task,
+and with tears in her eyes, asked: "Have you nothing to say in behalf of
+this man?"
+
+"Nothing; he has deserted three times," replied the Iron Duke.
+
+"O, your Grace, think again!"
+
+"Well, your Majesty, he certainly is a bad soldier, but there was
+somebody who spoke as to his good character. He may be a good fellow in
+civil life."
+
+"O, thank you!" exclaimed the Queen, as she dashed off the word,
+"Pardoned," on the awful parchment, and wrote beneath it her beautiful
+signature.
+
+This was not her last act of the kind, and at length Parliament so
+arranged matters that this fatal signing business could be done by royal
+commission, ostensibly to "relieve Her Majesty of a painful duty," but
+really because they could not trust her soft heart. She might have sudden
+caprices of commiseration which would interfere with stern military
+discipline, and the honest trade of Mr. Marwood.
+
+The other incident was told by Lord Melbourne. Soon after her accession,
+in all the dizzy whirl of the new life of splendor and excitement, the
+young Queen, in an interview with her Prime Minister, said: "I want to
+pay all that remain of my father's debts. I _must_ do it. I consider
+it a sacred duty." This was, of course, done--the Queen also sending
+valuable pieces of plate to the largest creditors, as a token of her
+gratitude. Lord Melbourne said that the childlike directness and
+earnestness of that good daughter's manner when she thus expressed her
+royal will and pleasure, brought the tears to his eyes. It seems to me it
+was almost mission enough for any young woman, to move the hearts of hard
+old soldiers like Wellington, and _blasé_ statesmen like Melbourne--
+mighty dealers in death and diplomacy, and to bring something like a
+second youth of romance and chivalrous feeling into worn and worldly
+hearts everywhere.
+
+I suppose it is impossible for young people of this day, especially
+Americans, to realize the intense, enthusiastic interest felt forty-six
+years ago by all classes, and in nearly all countries, in the young
+English Queen. The old wondered and shook their heads over the mighty
+responsibility imposed upon her--the young dreamed of her. She almost
+made real to young girls the wildest romances of fairy lore. She called
+out such chivalrous feelings in young men that they longed to champion
+her on some field of battle, or in some perilous knightly adventure. She
+stirred the hearts and inspired the imaginations of orators and poets.--
+The great O'Connell, when there was some wild talk of deposing "the all
+but infant Queen," and putting the Duke of Cumberland in her place, said
+in his trumpet-like tones, which gave dignity to brogue: "If necessary, I
+can get 500,000 brave Irishmen to defend the life, the honor, and the
+person of the beloved young lady by whom England's throne is now filled."
+Ah, the difference between then and now. "Brave Irishmen" of this day,
+men who know not O'Connell, are more disposed to blow up the English
+Queen's palaces, throne and all.
+
+Charles Dickens, who was then full of romance and fancy, was, it is said,
+possessed by such unresting, wondering thoughts of the fair maiden
+sovereign, and her magnificent destiny, that for a time his more prosaic
+friends regarded his enthusiasm as a sort of monomania. Other imaginative
+young men with heads less "level" (to use an American expression) than
+that of the great novelist, actually went mad--"clean daft"--the noble
+passion of loving loyalty ending in an infatuation as absurd as it was
+unhappy. Before the Queen left Kensington Palace she was much annoyed by
+the persistent attentions of a provincial admirer, a respectable
+gentleman, who labored under the hallucination that it was his destiny
+and his duty to espouse the Queen. He may have felt a preference for
+private life and rural pleasures, but as a loyal patriot he was ready to
+make the sacrifice. He drove in a stylish phaeton every morning to the
+Palace to inquire after Her Majesty's health; and on several days he
+bribed the men who had charge of the gardens to allow him to assist them
+in weeding about the piece of water opposite her apartments, in the fond
+hope of seeing her at the windows, and of her seeing him. Every evening,
+however, he put on the gentleman of fortune and phaetons, and followed
+the Queen and the Duchess in their airings. Drove they fast or drove they
+slow, he was just behind them. On their last drive before removing from
+Kensington, they alighted in the Harrow Road for a little walk, and were
+dismayed at seeing this Mr. ---- spring from his phaeton, and come
+eagerly forward. The Duchess sent a page to meet him and beg of him not
+to annoy Her Majesty by accosting her; but the page was "no let" to him--
+a whole volume of remonstrance would not have availed. He pressed on, and
+the august ladies were obliged to re-enter their carriage, and return to
+Kensington. When on the next morning they removed from the old home, Mr.
+---- was at the gate in his phaeton, and drove before them to Buckingham
+Palace, and was there to give them a gracious welcome. He haunted Pimlico
+for a time, but his friends finally got possession of him and suppressed
+him, and so ended his "love's young dream."
+
+It is likely that the merry young Queen laughed at the absurd
+demonstrations and amatory effusions of her demented admirers; but when,
+after her marriage, and her appearing always in public with the
+handsomest Prince in Christendom at her side, such monomaniacs grew
+desperate and took to shooting, the matter became serious. Then no more
+gentlemen in phaetons menaced her peace; her demented followers were poor
+wretches--so poor that sometimes, after investing in pistols, they had
+not a six-pence left for ammunition. One, a distraught Fenian, pointed at
+her a broken, harmless weapon, charged with a scrap of red rag. Another,
+a humpbacked lad, named Bean, loaded his with paper and a few bits of an
+old clay pipe. Bean escaped for a time, and it is said that for several
+days there were "hard lines" for all the poor humpbacks of London. Scores
+of them were arrested. No unfortunate thus deformed, could appear in the
+streets without danger of a policeman smiting him on the shoulders, right
+in the tender spot, with a rough, "You are my prisoner." Life became a
+double burden to the poor fellows till Bean was caught. But to return to
+the young Queen, in her happy, untroubled days.
+
+In August she took possession of Windsor Castle, amid great rejoicing.
+The Duchess, her mother, came also; this time not to be reproached or
+insulted. They soon had company--a lot of Kings and Queens, among them
+"Uncle Leopold" and his second wife, a daughter of Louis Philippe of
+France.
+
+The royal young house-keeper seems keenly to have enjoyed showing to her
+visitors her new home, her little country place up the Thames. She
+conducted them everywhere,
+
+"Up-stairs, down-stairs, and in my lady's chamber,"
+
+peeping into china and silver closets, spicy store-rooms, and huge linen
+chests smelling of lavender.
+
+Soon after came a triumphal progress to Brighton, during which the royal
+carriage passed under an endless succession of triumphal arches, and
+between ranks on ranks of schoolchildren, strewing roses and singing
+pæans. At Brighton there was an immense sacrifice of the then fashionable
+and costly flower, the dahlia, no fewer than twenty thousand being used
+for decorative purposes. But a sadder because a vain sacrifice on this
+occasion, was of flowers of rhetoric. An address, the result of much
+classical research and throes of poetic labor, and marked by the most
+effusive loyalty, was to have been presented to Her Majesty at the gates
+of the Pavilion, but by some mistake she passed in without waiting for
+it.
+
+About this time the Lunatic Asylums began to fill up. Within one week two
+mad men were arrested, proved insane, and shut up for threatening the
+life of the Queen and the Duchess of Kent. So Victoria's life was not all
+arched over with dahlia-garlands, and strewn with roses, nor were her
+subjects all Sunday-school scholars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Banquet in Guildhall--Victoria's first Christmas at Windsor Castle as
+Queen--Mrs. Newton Crosland's reminiscences--Coolness of Actors and
+Quakers amid the general enthusiasm--Issue of the first gold Sovereigns
+bearing Victoria's head.
+
+
+On Lord Mayor's Day, the Queen went in state to dine with her brother-
+monarch, the King of "Great London Town." It was a memorable, magnificent
+occasion. The Queen was attended by all the great ladies and gentlemen of
+her Court, and followed by an immense train of members of the royal
+family, ambassadors, cabinet ministers and nobility generally--in all,
+two hundred carriages of them. The day was a general holiday, and the
+streets all along the line of the splendid procession were lined with
+people half wild with loyal excitement, shouting and waving hats and
+handkerchiefs. It may have been on this day that Lord Albemarle got off
+his famous pun. On the Queen saying to him, "I wonder if my good people
+of London are as glad to see me as I am to see them?" he replied by
+pointing to the letters "V. R." "Your Majesty can see their loyal cockney
+answer-'_Ve are_.'"
+
+One account states that, "the young sovereign was quite overcome by the
+enthusiastic outbursts of loyalty which greeted her all along the route,"
+but a description of the scene sent me by a friend, Mrs. Newton Crosland,
+the charming English novelist and poet, paints her as perfectly composed.
+My friend says: "I well remember seeing the young Queen on her way to
+dine with the Lord Mayor, on the 9th of November, 1837, the year of her
+accession. The crowd was so great that there were constant stoppages,
+and, luckily for me, one of them occurred just under the window of a
+house in the Strand, where I was a spectator. I shall never forget the
+appearance of the maiden-sovereign. Youthful as she was, she looked every
+inch a Queen. Seated with their backs to the horses were a lady and
+gentleman, in full Court-dress--(the Duchess of Sutherland, Mistress of
+the Robes--and the Earl of Albemarle, Master of the Horse), and in the
+centre of the opposite seat, a little raised, was the Queen. All I saw of
+her dress was a mass of pink satin and swan's-down. I think she wore a
+large cape or wrap of these materials. The swan's-down encircled her
+throat, from which rose the fair young face--the blue eyes beaming with
+goodness and intelligence--the rose-bloom of girlhood on her cheeks, and
+her soft, light brown hair, on which gleamed a circlet of diamonds,
+braided as it is seen in the early portraits. Her small, white-gloved
+hands were reposing easily in her lap.
+
+"On this occasion not only were the streets thronged, but every window in
+the long line of the procession was literally filled, while men and boys
+were seen in perilous positions on roofs and lamp-posts, trees and
+railings. Loud and hearty cheers, so unanimous they were like one immense
+multitudinous shout, heralded the royal carriage.
+
+"A little before this date, a story was told of the lamentations of the
+Queen's coachman. He declared that he had driven Her Majesty for six
+weeks, without once being able to see her. Of course he could not turn
+his head or his eyes from his horses."
+
+At Temple Bar--poor, old Temple Bar, now a thing of the past!--the Queen
+was met by the Lord Mayor, who handed her the city keys and sword, which
+she returned to his keeping--a little further on, the scholars of
+Christ's Hospital--the "Blue-Coat Boys," offered her an address of
+congratulation, saying how glad they were to have a woman to rule over
+them, which was a good deal for boys to say, and also sung the National
+Anthem with a will.
+
+The drawing-room of Guildhall was fitted up most gorgeously. Here the
+address of the city magnates was read and replied to,--and here in the
+midst of Princes and nobles, Her Majesty performed a brave and memorable
+act. She knighted Sheriff Montefiore, the first man of his race to
+receive such an honor from a British sovereign, and Sir Moses Montefiore,
+now nearly a centenarian, has ever since, by a noble life and good works,
+reflected only honor on his Queen. But ah, what would her uncle, the late
+King, have said, had he seen her profaning a Christian sword by laying it
+on the shoulders of a Jew! He would rather have used it on the
+unbeliever's ears, after Peter's fashion.
+
+After this ceremony, they all passed into the Great Hall, which had been
+marvellously metamorphosed, by hangings and gildings, and all sorts of
+magnificent decorations, by mirrors and lusters, and the display of vast
+quantities of gold and silver plate--much of it lent for the occasion by
+noblemen and private gentlemen, but rivalled in splendor and value by the
+plate of the Corporation and the City Companies. From the roof hung two
+immense chandeliers of stained glass and prisms, which with the flashing
+of innumerable gas-jets, lighting up gorgeous Court-dresses, and the most
+superb old diamonds of the realm, made up a scene of dazzling splendor,
+of enchantment, which people who were there go wild over to this day.
+Poets say it was like a vision of fairyland, among the highest circles of
+that most poetic kingdom--and they know. I think a poet must have managed
+the musical portion of the entertainment, for when Victoria appeared
+sweet voices sang--
+
+  "At Oriana's presence all things smile!"
+
+and presently--
+
+         "Oh happy fair!
+  Your eyes are lode-stars and your tongue's sweet air,
+  More tunable than lark to shepherd's ear,
+  When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear."
+
+There was a raised platform at the east end of the hall, and on it the
+throne, a beautiful state-chair, of dainty proportions, made expressly
+for that fairy Princess, who took her seat thereon amid the most joyous
+acclamations. On the platform before her, was placed the royal table,
+decorated with exquisite flowers, and covered with a costly, gold-fringed
+damask cloth, on which were served the most delicate viands and delicious
+fruits, in season and out of season. Ah, as the young Queen, seated up
+there, received the homage of the richly-robed Aldermen, and the
+resplendent Sheriffs, and that effulgent Lord Mayor, she must have
+fancied herself something more than a fairy Princess,--say, an Oriental
+goddess being adored and sacrificed to by gorgeous Oriental Princes,
+Sultans and Satraps, Pashas, Padishas, and the Grand-Panjandrum himself.
+
+After the dinner, an imposing personage, called the Common Crier, strode
+into the middle of the hall, and solemnly cried out: "The Right Honorable
+the Lord Mayor gives the health of our Most Gracious Sovereign, Queen
+Victoria!" This, of course, was drunk with all the honors, and extra
+shouts that made the old hall ring. The Queen rose and bowed her thanks,
+and then the Common Crier announced--Her Majesty's toast: "The Lord
+Mayor, and prosperity to the City of London." The Queen, it is stated,
+honored this toast in sherry one hundred and twenty years old--liquid
+gold! Very gracious of her if she furnished the sherry. I hope, at all
+events, she drank it with reverence. Why, when that old wine was bottled,
+Her Majesty's grandfather lacked some twenty years of being born, and the
+American Colonies were as loyal as London;--then the trunk of the royal
+old Bourbon tree, whose last branch death lopped away but yesterday at
+Frohsdorf, seemed solid enough, though rotten at the core; and, the great
+French Revolution was undreamed of, except in the seething brain of some
+wild political theorist, or in some poor peasant's nightmare of
+starvation. When that old wine was bottled, Temple Bar, under the
+garlanded arch of which Her Majesty had just passed so smilingly, was
+often adorned with gory heads of traitors, and long after that old wine
+was bottled, men and women could be seen of a Friday, dangling from the
+front of Newgate prison, and swinging in the morning air, like so many
+ghastly pendulums.
+
+This year 1837, Victoria spent her first Christmas as a Queen at Windsor,
+right royally I doubt not, and I think it probable she received a few
+presents. A few days before, she had gone in state to Parliament, to give
+her assent to the New Civil List Act-not a hard duty for her to perform,
+it would seem, as that act settled on her for life an annual income of
+£385,000. Let Americans who begrudge our President his $50,000, and wail
+over our taxation, just put that sum into dollars. The English people did
+not grumble at this grant, as they had grumbled over the large sums
+demanded by Her Majesty's immediate predecessors. They knew it would not
+be recklessly and wickedly squandered, and they liked to have their
+bonnie young Queen make a handsome appearance among crowned heads. She
+had not then revealed those strong and admirable traits of character
+which later won their respect and affection,--but they were fond of her,
+and took a sort of amused delight in her, as though they, were all
+children, and she a wonderful new doll, with new-fashioned talking and
+walking arrangements. The friend from whom I have quoted--Mrs. Crosland--
+writes me: "I consider that it would be impossible to exaggerate the
+enthusiasm of the English people on the accession of Queen Victoria to
+the throne. To be able at all to understand it, we must recollect the
+sovereigns she succeeded--the Sailor-King, a most commonplace old man,
+with 'a head like a pine-apple'; George IV., a most unkingly king,
+extremely unpopular, except with a small party, of High Tories; and poor
+George III., who by the generation Victoria followed, could only be
+remembered as a frail, afflicted, blind old man--for a long period shut
+up at Kew, and never seen by his people. It was not only that Victoria
+was a really lovely girl, but that she had the _prestige_ of having
+been brought up as a Liberal, and then she kept the hated Duke of
+Cumberland from the throne. Possibly he was not guilty of half the
+atrocious sins attributed to him, but I do not remember any royal
+personage so universally hated."
+
+It was fear of this bogie of a Cumberland that made the English people
+anxious for the early marriage of the Queen, and yet caused them to dread
+it, for the fate of poor Princess Charlotte had not been forgotten. But I
+do not think that political or dynastic questions had much to do with the
+popularity of the young Queen. It was the resurrection of the dead
+dignity of the Royal House of Brunswick, in her fair person--the
+resuscitation of the half-dead principle of loyalty in the hearts of her
+people. Of her Majesty's subjects of the better class, actors and quakers
+alone seem to have taken her accession with all its splendid accessions,
+coolly,--the former, perhaps, because much mock royalty had somehow
+cheapened the real thing, and the latter because trained from infancy to
+disregard the pomps and show of this world. Macready jots down among the
+little matters in his "Diary," the fact of Her Majesty coming to his
+theatre, and waiting awhile after the play to see him and congratulate
+him. He speaks of her as "a pretty little girl," and does not seem
+particularly "set up" by her compliments. Joseph Sturge, the eminent and
+most lovable philanthropist of Birmingham,--a "Friend indeed" to all "in
+need,"--waited on Her Majesty, soon after her accession, as one of a
+delegation of the Society of Friends. Some years after, he related the
+circumstance to me, and simply described her to me as "a nice, pleasant,
+modest young woman,--graceful, though a little shy, and on the whole,
+comely."
+
+"Did you kiss her hand?" I asked. "O yes, and found that act of homage no
+hardship, I assure thee. It was a fair, soft, delicate little hand."
+
+I afterwards regretted that I had not asked him what he did with his
+broad-brimmed hat when he was about to be presented, knowing that the
+principles of Fox and Penn forbade his removing that article in homage to
+any human creature; but I have just discovered in a volume of Court
+Records, that "the deputation from the Society of Friends, commonly
+called Quakers, were uncovered, according to custom, by the Yeoman of the
+Guard." As they were all non-resistants, they doubtless bore the
+indignity passively and placidly. Moreover, they all bowed, if they did
+not kneel, before the throne on which their Queen was seated, and as I
+said kissed her hand, in token of their friendly fealty.
+
+In June, 1838, were issued the first gold sovereigns, bearing the head of
+the Queen--the same spirited young head that we see now on all the modern
+gold and silver pieces of the realm. That on the copper is a little
+different, but all are pretty--so pretty that Her Majesty's loyal
+subjects prefer them to all other likenesses, even poor men feeling that
+they cannot have too many of them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The Coronation.
+
+
+The coronation was fixed for June 28, 1838 a little more than a year from
+the accession.
+
+The, Queen had been slightly troubled at the thought of some of the
+antiquated forms of that grand and complicated ceremony--for instance,
+the homage of the Peers, spiritual and temporal. As the rule stood, they
+were all required after kneeling to her, and pledging their allegiance,
+to rise and kiss her on the left cheek. She might be able to bear up
+under the salutes of those holy old gentlemen, the archbishops and
+bishops--but the anticipation of the kisses of all the temporal Peers,
+old and young, was enough to appall her--there were six hundred of them.
+So she issued a proclamation excusing the noble gentlemen from that
+onerous duty, and at the coronation only the Royal Dukes, Sussex and
+Cambridge, kissed the Queen's rosy cheek, by special kinship privilege.
+The others had to be content with her hand. The other omitted ceremony
+was one which formerly took place in Westminster Hall--consisting chiefly
+of the appearance of a knight armed, mailed and mounted, who as Royal
+Champion proceeded to challenge the enemies of the new Sovereign to
+mortal combat. This, which had appeared ridiculous in the case of the
+burly George IV., would have been something pretty and poetic in that of
+the young maiden-Queen, but she doubtless felt that as every Englishman
+was disposed to be her champion, the old form would be the idlest,
+melodramatic bravado.
+
+The crown which had fitted George and William was too big and heavy for
+their niece--so it was taken to pieces, and the jewels re-set in a way to
+greatly reduce the size and weight. A description now before me, of the
+new crown is too dazzling for me to transcribe. I must keep my eyes for
+plainer work; but I can give the value of the bauble--£112,760!--and this
+was before the acquisition of the koh-i-noor.
+
+Of the coronation I will try to give a clear, if not a full account.
+
+It was a wonderful time in London when that day of days was ushered in,
+by the roar of cannon from the grim old Tower, answered by a battery in
+St. James' Park. Such a world of people everywhere! All Great Britain and
+much of the Continent seemed to have emptied themselves into this
+metropolis, which overflowed with a surging, murmuring tide of humanity.
+Ah me, how much of that eager, noisy life is silent and forgotten now!
+
+There may have before been coronations surpassing that of Victoria in
+scenic splendor, if not in solid magnificence-that of the first Napoleon
+and his Empress, perhaps-but there has been nothing so grand as a royal
+pageant seen since, until the crowning of the present Russian Emperor at
+Moscow, where the almost intolerable splendor was seen against a dark
+background of tragic possibilities. This English coronation was less
+brilliant, perhaps, but also less barbaric than that august, overpowering
+ceremony over which it seemed there might hover "perturbed spirits" of
+men slain in mad revolts against tyranny--of youths and women done to
+death on the red scaffold, in dungeons, in midnight mines, and Siberian
+snows; and about which there surely lurked the fiends of dynamite. But
+this pure young girl, trusting implicitly in the loving loyalty of her
+subjects--relying on Heaven for help and guidance, lifted to the throne
+by the Constitution and the will of a free people, as conquerors have
+been upborne on shields, what had she to fear? A very different and un-
+nihilistic "cloud of witnesses" was hers, we may believe. If ever there
+was a mortal state-occasion for the immortals to be abroad, it was this.
+
+The great procession started from Buckingham Palace at about 10 o'clock.
+The first two state carriages, each drawn by six horses, held the Duchess
+of Kent and her attendants. The Queen's mother, regally attired, was
+enthusiastically cheered all along the way. The Queen was, of course, in
+the grand state coach, which is mostly gilding and glass--a prodigiously
+imposing affair. It was drawn by eight cream-colored horses--great
+stately creatures--with white flowing manes, and tails like mountain
+cascades. Many battalions and military bands were stationed along the
+line, presenting arms and playing the National Anthem, "And the People, O
+the People!" Every window, balcony, and door-step was swarming, every
+foot of standing room occupied--even on roofs and chimneys. Ladies and
+children waved handkerchiefs and dropped flowers from balconies, and the
+shouts from below and the shouts from above seemed to meet and break into
+joyous storm-bursts in the air. Accounts state that Her Majesty "looked
+exceedingly well, and that she seemed in excellent spirits, and highly
+delighted with the imposing scene and the enthusiasm of her subjects."
+One would think she might have been.
+
+She had a great deal to go through with that day. She must have rehearsed
+well, or she would have been confused by the multiform ceremonials of
+that grand spectacular performance. The scene, as she entered Westminster
+Abbey, might well have startled her out of her serene calm, but it
+didn't. On each side of the nave, reaching from the western door to the
+organ screen, were the galleries, erected for the spectators. These were
+all covered with crimson cloth fringed with gold. Underneath them were
+lines of foot-guards, very martial-looking, fellows. The old stone floor,
+worn with the tread of Kings' coronations and funeral processions, was
+covered with matting, and purple and crimson cloth. Immediately under the
+central tower of the Abbey, inside the choir, five steps from the floor,
+on a carpet of purple and gold, was a platform covered with cloth of
+gold, and on it was the golden "Chair of Homage." Within the chancel,
+near the altar, stood the stiff, quaint old chair in I which all the
+sovereigns of England since Edward the Confessor have been crowned. Cloth
+of gold quite concealed the "chunk of old red sandstone," called the
+"stone of Scone," on which the ancient Scottish Kings were crowned, and
+which the English seem to keep and use for luck. There were galleries on
+galleries upholstered in crimson cloth, and splendid tapestries, wherein
+sat members of Parliament and foreign Princes and Embassadors. In the
+organ loft were singers in white, and instrumental performers in scarlet
+--all looking very fine and festive; and up very high was a band of
+trumpeters, whose music, pealing over the heads of the people, produced,
+at times, a wonderful effect.
+
+Fashionable people had got up early for once. Many were at the Abbey
+doors long before 5 o'clock, and when the Queen arrived at 11:30,
+hundreds of delicate ladies in full evening-dress, had been waiting for
+her for seven long hours. The foreign Princes and Embassadors were in
+gorgeous costumes; and there was the Lord Mayor in all his glory,
+blinding to behold. His most formidable rival was Prince Esterhazy, who
+sparkled with costly jewels from his head down to his boots-looking as
+though he had been snowed upon with pearls, and had also been caught out
+in a rain of diamonds, and had come in dripping. All these grand
+personages and the Peers and Peeresses were so placed as to have a
+perfect view of the part of the minster in which the coronation took
+place-called, in the programme, "the Theatre."
+
+The Queen came in about the middle of the splendid procession. In her
+royal robe of crimson velvet, furred with ermine, and trimmed with gold
+lace, wearing the collars of her orders, and on her head a circlet of
+gold-her immense train borne by eight very noble young ladies, she is
+said to have looked "truly royal," though so young, and only four feet
+eight inches in height. As she entered the Abbey, the orchestra and choir
+broke out into the National Anthem. They performed bravely, but were
+scarcely heard for the mighty cheers which went up from the great
+assembly, making the old minster resound in all its aisles and arches and
+ancient chapels. Then, as she advanced slowly towards the choir, the
+anthem, "_I was glad_" was sung, and after that, the sweet-voiced
+choir-boys of Westminster chanted like so many white-gowned, sleek-headed
+angels, "_Vivat Victoria Regina!_" Ah, then she felt very solemnly
+that she was Queen; and moving softly to a chair placed between the Chair
+of Homage and the altar, she knelt down on the "faldstool" before it, and
+meekly said her prayers.
+
+When the boys had finished their glad anthem, the Archbishop of
+Canterbury, with several high officers of state, moved to the east side
+of the theatre, when the Primate, in a loud voice, said: "I here present
+unto you Queen Victoria, the undoubted Queen of this realm, wherefore all
+you who are come this day to your homage, are you willing to do the
+same?"
+
+It seems a little confused, but the people understood it, and shouted,
+"God save Queen Victoria!" This "recognition," as it was called, was
+repeated at the south, west, and north sides of the "theatre," and every
+time was answered by that joyous shout, and by the pealing of trumpets
+and the beating of drums. The Queen stood throughout this ceremony, each
+time turning her head towards the point from which the recognition came.
+
+One may almost wonder if all those loyal shouts and triumphant
+trumpetings and drum-beatings did not trouble somewhat the long quiet of
+death in the dusky old chapels in which sleep the fair Queen Eleanor, and
+the gracious Philippa, and valiant Elizabeth, and hapless Mary Stuart.
+
+Then followed a great many curious rites and ceremonies of receiving and
+presenting offerings; and many prayers and the reading of the Litany, and
+the preaching of the sermon, in which the poor Queen was exhorted to
+"follow in the footsteps of her predecessor"--which would have been to
+walk "sailor-fashion" morally. Then came the administration of the oath.
+After having been catechised by the Archbishop in regard to the
+Established Church, Her Majesty was conducted to the altar, where
+kneeling, and laying her hand on the Gospels in the great Bible, she
+said, in clear tones, silvery yet solemn: "The things which I have here
+before promised, I will perform and keep. So help me God!"
+
+She then kissed the book, and after that the hymn, "_Come, Holy Ghost,
+our souls inspire_" was sung by the choir, the Queen still kneeling.
+
+I read the other day that the Duke of Connaught (Prince Arthur), on
+visiting Norwich Cathedral, was shown the very Bible on which his mother
+took her well-kept coronation oath, forty-five years ago. It was a most
+solemn pledge, and yet it was all comprehended in the little girl
+Victoria's promise to her governess, "I will be good."
+
+Her Majesty next seated herself in St. Edward's chair; a rich cloth of
+gold was held over her head, and the Archbishop anointed her with holy
+oil, in the form of a cross. Then followed more prayers, more forms and
+ceremonies, the presentation of swords and spurs, and such like little
+feminine adornments, the investing with the Imperial robe, the sceptre
+and the ring, the consecration and blessing of the new crown, and at last
+the crowning. In this august ceremony three Archbishops, two Bishops, a
+Dean, and several other clergymen were somehow employed. The task was
+most religiously performed. It was the Primate of all England who
+reverently placed the crown on that reverent young head. The moment this
+was done all the Peers and Peeresses, who, with their coronets in their
+hands, or borne by pages at their sides, had been intently watching the
+proceedings, crowned themselves, shouting, "God save the Queen!" while
+again trumpets pealed forth, and drums sounded, and the far-off Tower and
+Park guns, fired by signal, boomed over the glad Capital.
+
+It is stated that the most magically beautiful effect of all was produced
+by the Peeresses, in suddenly and simultaneously donning their coronets.
+It was as though the stars had somehow kept back their radiance till the
+young moon revealed herself in all her silver splendor.
+
+Then came the exhortation, an anthem, and a benediction, and after a few
+more forms and pomps, the Queen was conducted to the Chair of Homage.
+Before the next long ceremony began, the Queen handed her two sceptres to
+two of the lords in attendance, to keep for her, as quietly as any other
+girl might hand over to a couple of dangling young gentlemen her fan and
+bouquet to hold for her, while she drew on her gloves.
+
+The Lords Spiritual, headed by the Primate, began the homage by kneeling,
+and kissing the Queen's hand. Then came the Dukes of Sussex and
+Cambridge, who, removing their coronets, and touching them to the Crown,
+solemnly pledged their allegiance, and kissed their niece on the left
+cheek. Her manner to them was observed to be very affectionate. Then the
+other Dukes, and Peers on Peers did homage by kneeling, touching coronet
+to crown, and kissing that little white hand. When the turn of the Duke
+of Wellington came, the entire assembly broke into applause; and yet he
+was not the hero of the day, but an older and far more infirm Peer, Lord
+Rolle, who mounted the steps with difficulty, and stumbling at the top,
+fell, and rolled all the way back to the floor, where "he lay at the
+bottom of the steps, coiled up in his robes." At sight of the accident
+the Queen rose from her throne, and held out her hands as though to help
+him. It was a pretty incident, not for the poor Peer, but as showing Her
+Majesty's impulsive kindness of heart. The old nobleman was not hurt, but
+quickly unwound himself, rose, mounted the steps, and tried again and
+again to touch the crown with the coronet in his weak, uncertain hand,
+every plucky effort being hailed with cheers. At length the Queen,
+smiling, gave him her hand to kiss, dispensing with the form of touching
+her crown. Miss Martineau, who witnessed the scene, states that a
+foreigner who was present was made to believe by a wag that this
+ludicrous tumble was a part of the regular programme, and that the Lords
+Rolle held their title on condition of performing that feat at every
+coronation, Rolle meaning roll.
+
+This most tedious ceremony over, finishing up with more anthems,
+trumpets, drums, and shouts, the Sacrament was administered to the Queen
+--she discrowning herself, and kneeling while she partook of the holy
+elements. Then a re-crowning, a re-enthronement, more anthems, and the
+blessed release of the final benediction. Passing into King Edward's
+chapel, the Queen changed the Imperial for the Royal robe of purple
+velvet, and passed out of the Abbey, wearing her crown, bearing the
+sceptre in her right hand, and the orb in her left, and so got into her
+carriage, and drove home through the shouting multitude. It is stated
+that Her Majesty did not seem exhausted, though she was observed to put
+her hand to her head frequently, as though the crown was not, after all,
+a very comfortable fit.
+
+After reigning more than a year, she had been obliged to spend nearly
+five fatiguing hours in being finished as a Queen. How strange it all
+seems to us American Republicans, who make and unmake our rulers with
+such expedition and scant ceremony.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Pictures and descriptions of the Queen--Her love of pets--Her passion for
+horseback exercise--Her spirited behavior in the first change of her
+Ministers.
+
+
+In the Hall of the St. George's Society of Philadelphia there is a very
+interesting picture by the late Mr. Sully of Queen Victoria in her
+coronation robes. It is life-size, and represents her as mounting the
+steps of the throne, her head slightly turned, and looking back over the
+left shoulder. It seems to me that Her Majesty should own this picture,
+for it is an exquisite specimen of Mr. Sully's peculiar coloring, and a
+very lovely portrait. Here is no rigidity, no constraint, no irksome
+state. There is a springy, exultant vitality in the bearing of the
+graceful figure, and the light poise of the head, while in the complexion
+there is a tender softness and a freshness of tints belonging only to the
+dewy morning of life. The princeliness of youth, the glow of joy and hope
+overtop and outshine the crown which she wears as lightly as though it
+were a May-queen's Coronal of roses; and the dignity of simple girlish
+purity envelops her more royally than velvet and ermine. The eyes have
+the softness of morning skies and spring violets, and the smile hovering
+about the red lips, a little parted, is that of an unworn heart and an
+eager, confident spirit. This was the first portrait of the young Queen I
+ever saw, and still seems to me the loveliest.
+
+Another American artist, Mr. Leslie, painted a large picture of the
+coronation, which Her Majesty purchased. As he was to paint the scene, he
+was provided with a very good seat near the throne--so near that he said
+he could plainly see, when she came to sign her coronation oath, that she
+wrote a large, bold hand, doing credit to her old writing master, Mr.
+Steward.
+
+In his recollections he says: "I don't know why, but the first sight of
+her in her robes of state brought tears into my eyes, and it had this
+effect upon many people; she looked almost like a child." Campbell, the
+poet, is related to have said to a friend: "I was at Her Majesty's
+coronation in Westminster Abbey, and she conducted herself so well during
+the long and fatiguing ceremony that I shed tears many times."
+
+Carlyle said at the time, with a shake of his craggy, shaggy head: "Poor
+little Queen! she is at an age at which a girl can hardly be trusted to
+choose a bonnet for herself, yet a task is laid upon her from which an
+archangel might shrink.":
+
+And yet, according to Earl Russell, this "poor little Queen," over whom
+the painters and poets wept, and the great critic "roared gently" his
+lofty commiseration, informed her anxious mother that she "ascended the
+throne without alarm." Victoria, if reminded of this in later years,
+might have said, "They who know nothing, fear nothing"; and yet the very
+vagueness, as well as vastness, of the untried life would have appalled
+many spirits.
+
+The Queen was certainly a very valiant little woman, but there would have
+been something unnatural, almost uncanny, about her had the regal calm
+and religious seriousness which marked her mien during those imposing
+rites, continued indefinitely, and it is right pleasant to read in the
+reminiscences of Leslie, how the child in her broke out when all the
+magnificent but tiresome parade, all the grand stage-business with those
+heavy actors, was over. The painter says: "She is very fond of dogs, and
+has one favorite little spaniel, who is always on the lookout for her
+return when she is from home. She had, of course, been separated from him
+on that day longer than usual, and when the state-coach drove up to the
+Palace steps she heard him barking joyously in the hall, and exclaimed,
+'There's Dash,' and was in a hurry to doff her crown and royal robe, and
+lay down the sceptre and the orb, which she carried in her hands, and go
+and give Dash his bath."
+
+I hope this story is literally true, for I have a strong impression that
+it was this peculiar love of pets, this sense of companionship with
+intelligent, affectionate animals, especially dogs and horses, that with
+an ever-fresh delight in riding and dancing, healthful sports and merry
+games, was the salvation of the young Queen. Without such vents, the
+mighty responsibility of her dizzy position, the grandeur, the dignity,
+the decorum, the awful etiquette would have killed her--or at least,
+puffed her up with pride, or petrified her with formality. Sir John
+Campbell wrote of her at this time: "She is as merry and playful as a
+kitten."--I hope she loved kittens! Again he says: "The Queen was in
+great spirits, and danced with more than usual gaiety, a romping,
+country-dance, called the Tempest."
+
+In addition to this girlish gaiety, Victoria seems always to have had a
+vein of un-Guelph-like humor, a keen sense of the ludicrous, a delicious
+enjoyment of fun, which are among Heaven's choicest blessings to poor
+mortals, royal or republican. Prince Albert's sympathy with her love of
+innocent amusement, and her delight in the absurdities and drolleries of
+animal as well as of human life and character, was one and perhaps not
+the weakest of the ties which bound her to him.
+
+With the young Queen equestrian exercise was more than a pastime, it was
+almost a passion. She rode remarkably well, and in her gratitude for this
+beautiful accomplishment,--rarer even in England than people think--she
+wished as soon as she came to the throne, to give her riding-master,
+Fozard, a suitable position near her person, something higher than that
+of a groom. She was told that there was no situation vacant that he could
+fill. "Then I will create one," she said, and dubbed him "Her Majesty's
+Stirrup holder." I would have done more for him--made him Master of the
+Horse, in place of Lord Albemarle, who always rolled along in the royal
+carriage, or created for him the office of Lord High Equerry of the
+Realm.
+
+N. P. Willis, in his delightful "Pencilings By the Way," gives a bright
+glimpse of the Queen on horseback. It was in Hyde Park, and he saye the
+party from the Palace came on so fast that the scarlet-coated outriders
+had difficulty in clearing the track of the other equestrians. Her
+Majesty has always liked to go fast by horse or steam-power, as though
+determined not to let Time get ahead of her, for all his wings.
+
+The poet then adds: "Her Majesty rides quite fearlessly and securely. I
+met her party full gallop near the centre of Rotten Row. On came the
+Queen, on a dun-colored, highly-groomed horse, with her Prime Minister on
+one side of her, and Lord Byron on the other; her _cortège_ of Maids
+of Honor, and Lords and Ladies of the Court checking their spirited
+horses, and preserving always a slight distance between themselves and
+Her Majesty. ... Victoria's round, plump figure looks exceedingly well in
+her dark green riding-dress. ... She rode with her mouth open, and seemed
+exhilarated with pleasure."
+
+This was in 1839. Some years later, a young American writer, who shall be
+nameless, but who was as passionate a lover of horses as the Queen
+herself, wrote a sort of pæan to horseback-riding. She began by telling
+her friends, all whom it might concern, that when she was observed to be
+low in her mind--when she seemed "weary of life," and to "shrink from its
+strife"--when, in short, things didn't go well with her generally, they
+were not to come to her with the soft tones or the tears of sympathy;
+then she went on thus, rather pluckily, I think:
+
+  "No counsel I ask, and no pity I need,
+  But bring me, O bring me, my gallant young steed,
+  With his high-arched neck and his nostril spread wide;
+  His eye full of fire, and his step full of pride.
+  As I spring to his back, as I seize the strong rein,
+  The strength to my spirit returneth again,
+  The bonds are all broken that fettered my mind,
+  And my cares borne away on the wings of the wind,--
+  My pride lifts its head, for a season, bowed down,
+  And the queen in my nature now puts on her crown."
+
+Now if the simple American girl prepared for a lonely gallop through the
+woods, could so have thrilled with the fulness, joy, and strength of
+young life; could have felt so royal, mounted on a half-broken, roughly-
+groomed western colt (for that's what the "steed" really was), with few
+fine points and no pedigree to speak of--what must the glorious exercise
+have been to that great little Queen, re-enthroned on thoroughbred,
+"highly-groomed," magnificent English horse-flesh?
+
+Her Majesty has always been constant in her equine loves. Six of her
+saddle-horses, splendidly caparisoned, walked proudly, as so many
+Archbishops, in the coronation procession; and in the royal stables of
+London and Windsor, her old favorites have been most tenderly cared for.
+When she could no longer use them, she still petted them, and never
+reproached them for having "outlived their usefulness."
+
+Another writer from America, James Gordon Bennett, sent home, this
+coronation year, some very pleasant descriptions of the Queen. At the
+opera he had his first sight of her. "About ten o'clock, when the opera
+was half through, the royal party entered. 'There! there! there!'
+exclaimed a young girl behind me--'there's the Queen!' looking eagerly up
+to the royal box. I looked too, and saw a fair, light-haired little girl,
+dressed with great simplicity, in white muslin, with hair plain, a blue
+ribbon at the back, enter the box and take her seat, half hid in the red
+drapery at the corner remote from the stage. The Queen is certainly very
+simple in her appearance; but I am not sure that this very simplicity
+does not set off to advantage her fair, pretty, pleasant, little round
+Dutch face. Her bust is extremely well-proportioned, and her complexion
+very fair. There is a slight parting of the rosy lips, between which you
+can see little nicks of something like very white teeth. The expression
+of her face is amiable and good-tempered. I could see nothing like that
+awful majesty, that mysterious something which doth hedge a Queen. ...
+During the performance, the Queen would now and then draw aside the
+curtain and gaze back at the audience, with that earnestness and
+curiosity which any young girl might show."
+
+Mr. Bennett gave other descriptions of the Queen as he saw her driving in
+the Park. He wrote: "I had been taking a walk over the interior of the
+Park, gazing listlessly at the crowd of carriages as they rolled by. Just
+as I was entering the arched gateway to depart, a sensation spread
+through the crowd which filled that part of the promenade. 'The Queen!
+the Queen!' flew from lip to lip. In an instant two outriders shot
+through the gate; near Apsley House, followed by a barouche and four,
+carrying the Queen and three of her suite. She sat on the right hand of
+the back seat, leaning a good deal back. She was, as usual, dressed very
+simply, in white, with a plain straw, or Leghorn bonnet, and her veil was
+thrown aside. She carried a green parasol."
+
+Ah, why _green_, O Queen? Later that afternoon he saw her again, going at
+a slower rate, holding up that green parasol, bowing right and left and
+smiling, as the crowd saluted and cheered. The Queen does not bow and
+smile so much nowadays, but then she no longer carries a green parasol.
+
+N. P. Willis also saw the young sovereign at the opera, and dashes off a
+poet's vivid sketch of her:
+
+"In her box to the left of me sat the Queen, keeping time with her fan to
+the singing of Pauline Garcia, her favorite Minister, Lord Melbourne,
+standing behind her chair, and her maids of honor grouped around her--
+herself the youthful, smiling, admired sovereign of the most powerful
+nation on earth. The Queen's face has thinned and grown more oval since I
+saw her four years ago as the Princess Victoria. She has been compelled
+to think since then, and such exigencies in all stations in life work out
+the expression of the face. She has now what I should pronounce a
+decidedly intellectual countenance, a little petulant withal when she
+turns to speak, but on the whole quite beautiful enough for a virgin
+Queen. She was dressed less gaily than many others around her."
+
+I have given much space to these personal descriptions of Queen Victoria
+as she appeared in those first two years of her Queenhood, because they
+are still to the world--the world of young people, at least--the most
+interesting years of all her glorious reign. There was great poetry about
+that time, and, it must be confessed, some peril.
+
+Mrs. Oliphant, in her excellent little life of the Queen, says: "The
+immediate circle of friends around the young sovereign fed her with no
+flatteries."
+
+It is difficult to believe such a statement of any mortal Court-circle.
+But if gross adulation was not offered--a sort of moral pabulum, which
+the Queen's admirable good sense would have rejected, there was profound
+homage in the very attitude of courtiers and in the etiquette of Court
+life. The incense of praise and admiration, "unuttered or exprest," was
+perpetually and inevitably rising up about her young footsteps wherever
+they strayed; it formed the very air she breathed--about as healthful an
+atmosphere to live and sleep in as would be that of a conservatory
+abounding in tuberoses, white lilies, and jessamine.
+
+Still, that she did not grow either arrogant or artificial, seems proved
+by the pleasant accounts given of her simple and gracious ways by the
+painters of whom I have spoken--Thomas Sully and Charles Leslie. I
+remember particularly, hearing from a friend of Mr. Sully, of the
+generous interest she took in his portrait of her, which, I think, was
+painted at Windsor. She gave him all the sittings, or rather standings,
+her busy life would allow; giving him free use of all the splendid
+paraphernalia necessary for his work. Between whiles the painter's young
+daughter stood for the picture, being, of course, obliged to don the
+royal robes and even the tiara. One day, while thus engaged and arrayed,
+the Queen came suddenly into the room. Miss Sully much confused was about
+to descend from the steps of the throne, when the Queen exclaimed,
+laughing: "Pray stay as you are; I like to see how I look!"
+
+Leslie, whose picture of the Coronation was painted at Windsor, gave a
+pleasant account of the Queen's kindly and easy ways. "She is now," he
+says, "so far satisfied with the likeness that she does not wish me to
+touch it again. She sat five times--not only for the face, but for as
+much as is seen of the figure, and for the hands, with the coronation-
+ring on the finger. Her hands, by the by, are very pretty--the backs
+dimpled and the fingers delicately shaped. She was particular to have her
+hair dressed exactly as she wore it at the ceremony every time she sat."
+
+The Queen in her writings says very little of this portion of her
+"strange, eventful history,"--a time so filled with incident, so gilded
+with romance, so bathed in poetry, so altogether splendid in the eyes of
+all the world; for to her, life--or all which was most "happy and
+glorious" in life--began and ended with Prince Albert. She even speaks
+with regret of that period of single queenliness, and says: "A worse
+school for a young girl--one more detrimental to all natural feelings and
+affections--cannot well be imagined than the position of a Queen at
+eighteen without experience and without a husband to guide and support
+her. This the Queen can state from painful experience, and she thanks God
+that none of her own dear daughters are exposed to such danger."
+
+Human nature is rash and young-woman-nature ambitious and ill-disposed to
+profit by the costly experience of eld, and I doubt not the clever
+Princess Royal or the proud and fair Princess Louise would have mounted
+any throne in Christendom "without alarm." Most of Her Majesty's loyal
+subjects deny that any harm came to her from her unsupported position as
+Queen Regnant, or that she was capable of being thus harmed--but the
+Queen knows best.
+
+The Princess Victoria was a proud, high-spirited girl, and it were no
+treason to suppose that at the first she had a sense of relief when the
+leading-strings, in which she had been so long held, were cut, though by
+the scissors of Atropos, and she was free to stand and go alone. Her good
+mother, becoming at once an object of political jealousy, removed herself
+from the old close companionship, though retaining in her heart the old
+tender solicitude--perhaps feeling herself more than ever necessary to
+her daughter. Mothers are so conceited. It is small wonder if after her
+life of studious and modest seclusion and filial subordination, the
+gaiety, the splendor, and the supremacy of the new existence intoxicated
+the young sovereign somewhat. The pleasures of her capital and the homage
+of the world captivated her imagination, while the consciousness of power
+and wealth and personal loveliness inclined her to be self-indulgent and
+self-willed. In spite of the good counsel of the family Mentor, Baron
+Stockmar, and of her sagacious uncle, Leopold, she must have committed
+some errors of judgment--fallen into some follies; she was so young and
+impulsive--so very human. Her first independent political act seems to
+have been a mistake, founded on a misunderstanding. It was at all events
+an act more Georgian than Victorian. The Whig party, to which she was
+attached, had by a series of blunders and by weak vacillation lost
+strength and popularity, and Lord Melbourne's Ministry found itself so
+hard-pressed that it struck colors and resigned. Then the Queen was
+advised by the Duke of Wellington  to invite the Conservative leader, Sir
+Robert Peel, to form a new Ministry. She did so, but frankly told that
+gentleman that she was very sorry to lose Lord Melbourne and his
+colleagues, whom she liked and approved--which must have been pleasant
+talk to Sir Robert. However, he went to work, but soon found that
+objections were made by his colleagues to certain Whig ladies in personal
+attendance on the Queen, and likely to influence her. So it was proposed
+to Her Majesty to make an important change in her household. I believe
+that the Duchess of Sutherland and Lady Normandy--the first the sister
+and the second the wife of a prominent Liberal--were especially meant;
+but the Queen took it that she was called on to dismiss all her ladies,
+and flatly refused, saying that to do so would be "repugnant to her
+feelings"--forgetting that feeling was no constitutional argument. She
+had got used to those Ladies of the Bed-Chamber, and they to her. They
+knew just where everything was, what colors became her, and what gossip
+and games amused her. Doubtless she loved them, and doubtless also she
+loved her own way. Surely the right of her constitutional advisers to
+dictate to her must have a limit somewhere, and she drew the line at her
+bed-chamber door. Then, as Sir Robert would not yield the point, she
+recalled Melbourne and went on as before. The affair created immense
+excitement. Non-political people were amused at the little Queen's spirit
+of independence. Liberals applauded her patriotism and pluck in defeating
+the "wicked Bed-Chamber Plot," and for her loyalty to her friends; but
+the defeated Tories were very naturally incensed, and, manlike, paid Her
+Majesty back, when measures which she had much at heart came before
+Parliament a year or so later--as we shall see.
+
+Many years later the Queen appears to have thought that she was beginning
+to drift on to rocks of serious political mistakes and misfortunes as
+well as into rapids of frivolity, when the good, wise Pilot came to take
+the helm of her life-craft.
+
+This pilot was, of course, the "Prince Charming," selected and reared for
+her away in Saxe-Coburg--that handsome Cousin Albert, once in a letter to
+the good uncle Leopold tacitly accepted by her in girlish
+thoughtlessness, as she would have accepted a partner in a joyous
+country-dance, and afterwards nearly as thoughtlessly thrown over and
+himself sent adrift.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Prince Albert.
+
+
+If the Princess Charlotte was the prototype of her cousin Victoria,
+Prince Leopold was in some respects the prototype of his beloved nephew
+Albert, who was born in August, 1819, at Rosenau, a charming summer
+residence of his father, the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfield. The
+little Prince's grandmother, the Dowager-Duchess of Saxe-Coburg, in
+writing to her daughter, the Duchess of Kent, to announce the happy
+event, says: "The little boy is to be christened to-morrow, and to have
+the name of Albert."
+
+When the christening came off it appeared that "Albert" was only one and
+the simplest of several names, but he was always known and always will be
+known by that name. It has been immortalized by his upright character,
+his rare intellectual gifts, his goodness and grace; by the affection of
+his countrymen and his noble life-work in England; by the genius of
+England's greatest living poet, and by the love and sorrow of England's
+Queen.
+
+While the Prince was yet a baby, his mother wrote of him: "Albert is
+superb,--remarkably beautiful, with large blue eyes, a delicate mouth, a
+fine nose, and dimpled cheeks. He is lively and always gay."
+
+Albert was the second son of the Duke and Duchess. Ernest, a year or two
+older, is thus described by his mother: "Ernest is very strong and
+robust, but not half so pretty as his brother. He is handsome, though;
+with black eyes."
+
+Prince Leopold spent some time with his brother at Coburg when Albert was
+about two years old, and then began the tender, life-long mutual
+affection which led to such happy and important results. The young mother
+wrote: "Albert adores his uncle Leopold; never quits him for a moment;
+looks sweetly at him; is constantly embracing him; and is never happy
+except when near him."
+
+The grandmother also wrote: "Leopold is very kind to the little boys.
+Bold _Albertinchen_ drags him constantly about by the hand. The little
+fellow is the pendant to the pretty cousin (Princess Victoria); very
+handsome, but too slight for a boy; lively, very funny, all good nature,
+and full of mischief. The other day he did not know how to make enough of
+me, because I took him with me in the carriage. He kept saying, 'Albert
+is going with grandmamma!' and gave me his little hand to kiss. 'There,
+grandmamma, kiss!'"
+
+The little Princes were not long to enjoy the care and society of their
+loving and lovely mother. An unhappy estrangement between their parents,
+followed by a separation and a divorce, left them at seven and five years
+old half-orphaned; for they never saw their mother again. She died at St.
+Wendel, in Switzerland, while still young and beautiful; but doubtless
+weary enough of life, which had brought her such happiness, only to take
+it away. Two words as holy as her prayers, were on her dying lips--
+"Ernest!" "Albert!"
+
+But the boys were rich in grandmothers--having two of the very tenderest
+and dearest of Dowager-Duchesses to watch over them (watching each other,
+perhaps, the while) and to minister to them for many a year. According to
+these venerable ladies, Albert, who was certainly a delicate, nervous
+child, was one of those "little angels" who are destined not to survive
+the dimpled, golden-curled, lisping, and croupy period; being too good
+and sweet and exquisite for this wicked and rough world. But, according
+to certain entries in the Prince's own diary--his first, begun in his
+sixth year--he at that age happily revealed some hopeful signs of saving
+naughtiness and healthful "original sin."
+
+"11th _February_, 1825.
+"I was told to recite something, but did not wish to do so. That was not
+right--naughty!"
+
+"20th _February_.
+"I had left all my lesson books lying about in the room, and I had to put
+them away; then I cried."
+
+"28th _February_.
+"I cried at my lesson to-day because I could not find a verb, and the
+Rath (tutor) pinched me, to show me what a verb was. I cried about it."
+
+"9th _April_.
+"I got up well and happy; afterward I had a fight with my brother."
+
+"10th _April_.
+"I had another fight with my brother; that was not right."
+
+This almost baby-prince seems to have been a valorous little fellow. When
+his blood was up he seems to have given little thought to the superior
+age or strength of his opponents, but to have been always ready to "pitch
+in"; or, to use the more refined and courtly language of his tutor, M.
+Florschütz, "he was not, at times, indisposed to resort to force, if his
+wishes were not at once complied with."
+
+For several years the young Princes, devoted to each other, passed
+studious, yet active and merry lives at the Coburg Palace, and in the
+dear country home of Rosenau. They seem to have corresponded with their
+cousin Victoria, whom, it seems, the lad Albert was led by his grandmamma
+Coburg to regard with an especially romantic and tender interest. That
+grandmamma, the mother of Prince Leopold and the Duchess of Kent, and who
+seems to have been a very able and noble woman, died when her darling
+Albert was about twelve years old; but the hope of her heart did not die
+with her, and without doubt Prince Albert was educated with special and
+constant reference to a far more important and brilliant destiny than
+often falls to the lot of the young sons of even Grand Ducal houses. He
+was well instructed in many branches of science, in languages, in music
+and literature, in politics, and what seems a contradiction, in ethics,--
+his moral development being most carefully watched over, while his
+physical training was a pendant to that which made his cousin Victoria
+one of the healthiest and hardiest of modern Englishwomen. With a
+delicate constitution and a sensitive, nervous temperament, Prince Albert
+would scarcely have lived to manhood, except for that admirable physical
+training. As a child, he was braced up by much life in the open air,
+simple diet, a good deal of rough play--while as to sleep, he was allowed
+to help himself, which he did plentifully, being much given to
+somnolency. As a lad and youth, he hardened himself by all healthful
+manly sports and exercises; in short, made a boy of mamma's "angel," a
+man of grandmamma's golden-haired darling. Nor was that great element of
+a liberal education, travel, wanting. The brothers paid visits to their
+uncle Leopold, now King of Belgium, and after tours in Germany, Austria,
+and Holland, visited England, and their aunt Kent and their cousin
+Victoria, to whom they were most warmly commended by their uncle.
+
+According to the Queen's books, with this visit of three weeks began the
+personal acquaintance of the cousins; yet old Kensingtonians have a
+legend which they obstinately cling to, that Prince Albert, when much
+younger, spent three years in the old brick palace with his aunt and
+cousin, in pursuance of the matrimonial plans of the Duchess of Kent and
+Prince Leopold; and I have seen in a quaint old juvenile book a wood-cut
+representing the little Victoria in a big hat, riding on a pony in the
+park, and little Albert in a visored cap and short jacket running along
+at her side. But, of course, it was all a mistake; there was no such
+period of childish courtship, and the boy in the queer Dutch cap was an
+optical illusion, or a "double," in German a _doppel-gänger_. During
+the real visit, occurred the seventeenth birthday of the Princess, and
+there were public rejoicings and Court-festivities, preceded and followed
+for the cousins by days of pleasant companionship, in walking and riding,
+and evenings of music and dancing. But if the lad Albert, remembering the
+promise of his garrulous nurse, and the prophecy of his fond grandmamma,
+and the wish of his father and uncle Leopold, sought to read his destiny
+in the baffling blue eyes of the gay young girl, he seems to have failed,
+for he could only write home: "Our cousin is most amiable." Perhaps
+Victoria's own wonderful destiny, now drawing near, left little room in
+her heart or thought for lesser romances; perhaps the crown of England
+suspended over her head as by a single hair, the frail life of an old
+man, outdazzled even the graces and merits of her handsome but rather
+immature kinsman. Besides, "Prince Charming" at that time was short and
+stout, and he spoke our language too imperfectly to make love (which he
+would have pronounced _luf_) in the future Queen's English; and so
+he went away without any exchange of vows, or rings, or locks of fair
+hair or miniatures, and returned to his studies, principally at the
+University of Bonn. It is true that the Princess wrote to her "dearest
+uncle Leopold" soon after this visit, begging him to take special care of
+one now so dear to her, adding: "I hope and trust that all will go on
+prosperously and well on this subject now of so much importance to me."
+Yet King Leopold was a wise man, and did not build too securely on the
+fancy of a girl of seventeen, though he kept to work, he and the Baron,
+on their Prince-Consort making, in spite of the opposition of old King
+William, and all his brothers, and the candidates favored by them.
+
+It was from quaint, quiet old Bonn that Prince Albert wrote, on his
+cousin's accession to the throne, his famous letter of congratulation, in
+which there appeared not one word of courtier-like adulation--not a
+thought calculated to stir the heart of the young girl suddenly raised to
+that giddy height overlooking the world, with a thrill of exultation or
+vain-gloriousness. Thus wrote this boy-man of eighteen: "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
+the high, but difficult task."
+
+After leaving the University Prince Albert traveled in Switzerland and
+Italy with Baron Stockmar--everywhere winning the admiration and respect
+of the best sort of people by the rare princeliness of his appearance,
+his refined taste, his thoughtful and singularly receptive mind. And so
+three years went by. They were three years of uncertainty in regard to
+the great projects formed for him, of happiness, and a noble and useful,
+if subordinate career. King Leopold, the good genius of the two families,
+had not suffered his cousin to forget him, but though she declared she
+cared for no one else, she was not disposed to enter into any positive
+engagement, even with Albert. She enjoyed intensely her proud,
+independent position as Queen Regnant. She was having such a glorious
+swing at life, and very naturally feared the possible restraints, and the
+inevitable subordination of marriage. She was "too young to marry," and
+Albert was still younger--full three months. She would remain as she was,
+the gay, untrammeled maiden-Queen of England, for at least three or four
+years longer, and then think about it. The Prince was made, aware by his
+uncle Leopold of his royal cousin's state of feeling, or unfeeling, and
+was in a very doubtful and despondent state of mind when, polished by
+study and travel, grown tall and graceful, and "ideally beautiful," a
+veritable "Prince Charming," he came over the sea, out of fairyland, via
+Rotterdam, to seek his fortune--to attempt, at least, to wake the
+grandeur-enchanted Princess from her passionless dream of lonely,
+loveless sovereignty. He came, was seen, and conquered! But not at once;
+ah, no; for this charming royal idyll had its changing strophes, marking
+deepening degrees of sentiment--admiration, interest, hope, assurance,
+joyous certainty.
+
+The Queen had resolved to receive both the Princes with cousinly
+affection and royal honors, but as though they had come on an ordinary
+visit. As for Albert, she meant probably to reason with him frankly, till
+he should be convinced that they were "ower young to marry yet"--till he
+should realize his own exceeding youthfulness. Then, as he must go away,
+and "wait a little longer," she would see as much of him as possible--he
+was such a good, constant fellow. But she must give due attention to her
+other guests; and then the State had some claim on her time. But when the
+Coburg Princes arrived at Windsor, and the Queen, with her mother, met
+them at the head of the grand staircase, somehow she had only eyes for
+the younger brother; he had grown so manly, so tall, quite out of the old
+objectionable stoutness; he had so improved in his English; he was so
+handsome--so every way presentable! So, in spite of the gaieties and
+forms, and the comings and goings of Windsor, so very much did the royal
+maiden, hitherto so gay and "fancy-free" see of her cousin Albert
+preparatory to bidding him an indefinite adieu, that on the second day
+even, cause for jealousy was given to aspiring courtiers by smiles and
+words, especially sweet and gracious, bestowed on the fair Saxon Knight.
+On that second day the Queen wrote to her uncle Leopold: "Albert's beauty
+is most striking, and he is most amiable and unaffected; in short, very
+fascinating." She then added, with an exquisite touch of maiden coyness:
+"The young men are _both_ amiable, delightful companions, and I am
+glad to have them here."
+
+When a few more days had passed in familiar intercourse, in singing and
+walking, in dancing and driving, and best of all, in riding together
+(for there is no cradle to rock young Love in like the saddle), the poor
+little Queen forsworn, found she had no longer the courage to propose to
+that proud young Prince to wait indefinitely on her will--to tarry at
+Coburg for more wisdom and beard. At the thought of it she seemed to see
+something of noble scorn about his lips, and such grave remonstrance in
+his gentle, pensive, forget-me-not eyes, that--the words of parting were
+never spoken, or not till after many happy years.
+
+Alas for this fairy-Prince in an unfairylike kingdom! He could only
+declare his love, and sound the heart of his beloved, with his eyes.
+Etiquette put a leaden seal on his lips till from hers should come the
+sweet avowal and the momentous proffer to rule the ruler--to assume
+love's sovereignty over the Sovereign. After five days of troubled yet
+joyous waiting, it came--the happy "climax," as the Prince called it in a
+letter to Baron Stockmar--and then that perfectest flower of human life,
+whether in palace or cottage, a pure and noble love, burst into full and
+glorious bloom in each young heart. One cannot, even now, read without a
+genuine heart-thrill, and a mistiness about the eyes, the simple touching
+story of that royal romance of royal old Windsor. More than two-score
+years have passed, and yet how fresh it seems! It has the dew and the
+bloom of Paradise upon it.
+
+What in all this story seems to me most beautiful and touching, because
+so exquisitely womanly, is the meekness of the young Queen. Though as
+Queen she offered the Prince her coveted hand--that hand that had held
+the sceptre of sceptres, and which Princes and Peers and the
+representatives of the highest powers on earth, had kissed in homage, it
+was only as a poor little woman's weak hand, which needed to be upheld
+and guided in good works, by a stronger, firmer hand; and her head, when
+she laid it on her chosen husband's shoulder, had not the feel of the
+crown on it. Indeed, she seems to have felt that his love was her real
+coronation, his faith her consecration.
+
+To the beloved Stockmar, to whom but a little while before she had
+communicated her unalterable determination not to marry any one for ever
+so long the newly betrothed wrote: "I do feel so guilty I know not how to
+begin my letter; but I think the news it will contain will be sufficient
+to ensure your forgiveness. Albert has completely won my heart, and all
+was settled between us this morning. I feel certain he will make me
+happy. I wish I could feel as certain of my making him happy, but I will
+do my best."
+
+Among the entries in the Queen's journal are many like this: "How I will
+strive to make Albert feel as little as possible the great sacrifice he
+has made. I told him it _was_ a great sacrifice on his part, but he
+would not allow it."
+
+Of course the Prince had too much manly feeling and practical good sense
+to "allow it." He knew he was the most envied, not only of all poor
+German Princes about that time, but of all young scions of royalty the
+world over; and besides, he loved his cousin. There is no record or
+legend or hint of his having ever loved any other woman, except his good
+grandmothers. To her of Gotha he wrote: "The Queen sent for me alone to
+her room the other day, and declared to me in a genuine outburst of
+affection that I had gained her whole heart, and would make her intensely
+happy if I would make her the sacrifice of sharing her life with her, for
+she said she looked on it as a sacrifice; the only thing which troubled
+her was that she did not think she was worthy of me. The joyous openness
+with which she told me this enchanted me, and I was quite carried away by
+it."
+
+Still, and always the thought of "sacrifice!" This sentiment of tender
+humility, of deference and reverence the Queen never lost. Indeed, it
+seems to have grown with years, and as the character of the Prince-
+Consort unfolded more and more in beauty, strength, dignity, and
+uprightness.
+
+A month was passed by the lovers, in such happiness as comes but once in
+life to the most fortunate human beings--to some, alas! never. Then the
+Prince returned to Coburg, to settle his affairs and to take leave of his
+old home and his kindred. Those partings seem to have pulled hard on his
+heart-strings, and are distressing to read about. One would think he was
+bound for the "under-world," to wed the Queen of Madagascar. These
+Germans are such passionate lovers of the fatherland, that one wonders
+how they can ever bring themselves to leave it, to make grand marriages
+in England, or fortunes in America, to start a royal house, or a
+kindergarten--to become a Field Marshal or a United States Senator.
+
+But all that grief at Coburg and Gotha showed how dearly Prince Albert
+was loved, and how he loved.
+
+It seems that the fair cousin at Windsor was scarcely gay, for the
+Prince, writing to her mother, says: "What you say of my poor little
+bride, sitting all alone in her room, silent and sad, has touched my
+heart. Oh, that I might fly to her side to cheer her!"
+
+But she could not have much indulged in this solitary, idle brooding, for
+she had work to do, and must be up and doing. First, she had to summon a
+Privy Council, which met at Buckingham Palace;--more than eighty Peers,
+mostly solemn old fellows, who had outlived their days of romantic
+sentiment, if they ever had any, yet to whom the Queen had to declare her
+love for her cousin Albert, and her intention to marry him, being
+convinced, she said, that this union would "secure her domestic felicity,
+and serve the interests of her country." It was a little hard, yet a
+certain bracelet, containing a certain miniature, which she wore on her
+arm, gave her "courage," she said. Then came a yet more trying ordeal,
+for a modest young lady--the announcement of her intended marriage, in a
+speech from the throne, in the House of Lords. With the utmost dignity
+and calmness, and with a happiness which sparkled in her eyes and glowed
+in her blushes, and made strangely beautiful her young face, she read the
+announcement in the clear, musical tones so peculiar to her, and with an,
+almost religious solemnity. The glory of pure maidenly trust and devotion
+resting on her head, outshone the jewels of her tiara; Love was enthroned
+at her side.
+
+All was not sunshine, rose-bloom and soft airs before the young German
+husband of the Queen. Much doubt and jealousy and some unfriendliness
+were waiting for him in high places. The disappointed Tory party, and
+some Radicals, opposed hotly the proposed grant for the Prince of
+£50,000, and at last cut it down to £30,000.
+
+Then came a discussion over a clause in the Bill for the Naturalization
+of the Prince, empowering the husband of the Queen to take precedence
+over even the Royal Princes, and to be ever at her side, where he
+belonged, which, though finally assented to by these most interested in
+England--the Dukes of Sussex and Cambridge--was stoutly opposed by their
+elder brother, the Duke of Cumberland, for Heaven and Hanover had not
+relieved the English Government of "the bogie." In support of his rights,
+Wellington and Brougham stood out, and the clause was dropped. But the
+Queen, by the exercise of her prerogative, gave the Prince the title of
+Royal Highness, and made him a Field Marshal in the British army; and
+about a month later, she settled the precedence question, as far as
+concerned England, by proclaiming that by her royal will and pleasure her
+husband should "enjoy place, pre-eminence and precedence, next to Her
+Majesty."
+
+The amiable Prince is said never to have cherished resentment towards Sir
+Robert Peel and others who had voted to cut down his allowance, or the
+Duke of Wellington, and Lord Brougham, who had argued that those tiresome
+old gentlemen, the Royal Dukes, should have the right to walk and sit
+next to _his_ wife on State occasions; but Victoria confesses that
+she long felt "most indignant." She was hurt not only in her wifely love,
+but in her queenly pride.
+
+Greville says of Kings: "The contrast between their apparent authority
+and the contradictions which they practically meet with, must be
+peculiarly galling--more especially to men whose minds are seldom
+regulated by the beneficial discipline of education, and early collision
+with their equals." It must be yet more "galling" for Queens, because
+they always have been more flattered, and are imaginative enough to fancy
+that in grasping the symbols they hold the power.
+
+But I do not believe that the royal lovers took deeply to heart these
+disagreeable matters at this time. I hope they didn't mourn much over the
+£20,000 they didn't get. I hope that Love lifted them far above the murky
+air of party strife and petty jealousy into a clear, serene atmosphere of
+its own. They knew--and it was a great thing to know--that they had the
+sympathy of all the true hearts of the realm, whether beating under the
+"purple and fine linen" of the rich and noble, or the rough and simple
+garments of the poor and humble.
+
+On the 10th of February, 1840, Prince Albert, always tenderly thoughtful
+of the dear old Dowager of Saxe-Gotha, his "_liebe grosmama_" who,
+when he had parted from her last, had stood at her window, weeping,
+stretching out her arms and so desolately calling after him, "Albert!
+Albert!" sat down and wrote as no beautifulest Prince of poetry or
+romance ever wrote to a feeble, old female relative on his wedding-day:
+
+"DEAR GRANDMAMMA: In less than three hours, I shall stand at the altar,
+with my dear bride. In these solemn moments, I must once more ask your
+blessing, which I am well assured I shall receive, and which will be my
+safeguard and future joy. I must end. God be my stay!
+
+"Your faithful
+
+"ALBERT."
+
+This letter may seem a little too solemn and ill-assured, but it shows in
+what a serious and devout spirit this young Prince, not yet of age,
+entered on that auspicious and splendid union, whose wedding-bells rang
+round the world. Moreover, the young man's position was a rather trying
+one. As yet, he was little known in England, while it was well known that
+the Royal Family had been from the first opposed to his marriage with
+Victoria. Though the land of the Teutons had so long been the nursery of
+English Kings and Queens, the English common people were jealous of
+Teutonic Princes--regarding them for the most part as needy adventurers,
+for whom England was only the great milch-cow of Germany. Prince Albert
+had a host of prejudices to live down; and he did live down most of them,
+but some have died hard over his grave.
+
+The Queen's wedding was second only to the coronation, as a grand and
+beautiful pageant for the privileged few who could witness it, for of
+course the old Royal Chapel of St. James was a much narrower stage for
+the great scene than the Abbey. Still, royalty and nobility turned out in
+force, and all the greatest of the great were there. The sombre chapel
+was made to look very gay and gorgeous with hangings and decorations;
+even before the ladies in rich dresses and with all their costliest
+jewels on, and the gentlemen in brilliant uniforms and Court-costumes
+arrived. The bridegroom, when he walked up the aisle, between his father
+and his brother, bowing affably right and left, drew forth murmurs of
+admiration by his rare beauty and grace--princeliest of Princes.
+
+The Queen is described as looking unusually pale, but very lovely, in a
+magnificent robe of lace over white satin trimmed with orange blossoms,
+and with a most exquisite Honiton veil. In the midst of her twelve
+bridesmaids, her face radiant with happiness, she seemed like the whitest
+of diamonds set in pearls--or so they say.
+
+Her Majesty is also described as bearing herself with great dignity and
+composure, and to have gone through the service very solemnly. And yet I
+have heard a little story that runs thus: When Prince Albert, in this
+last act of "_Le Jeune Homme Pauvre_" came to repeat, as he placed
+the ring on her finger, the words, "With all my worldly goods I thee
+endow," the merry girl-Queen was unable to suppress an arch smile.
+
+The Duchess of Kent is described as looking "tearful and distressed." Ah,
+why will mothers always cry at their daughters' weddings, even when they
+have hoped and schemed for that very match; and why will brides, though
+ever so much in love, weep, first or last, on the wedding morning? Lady
+Lyttleton, in her correspondence, said of the Queen--"Her eyes were
+swollen with tears; but," she adds, "there was great happiness in her
+countenance, and her look of confidence and comfort at the Prince, when
+they walked away, as man and wife, was very pleasant to see."
+
+Ah, "when they walked away as man and wife"--now simply and for always to
+each other, "Albert" and "Victoria," the separate life of our "Prince
+Charming" closed. Thenceforth, the two bright life-streams seemed to flow
+on together, completely merged, indistinguishable, indivisible, but only
+_seemed_--for, alas, one has reached the great ocean before the
+other.
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+WIFEHOOD AND MOTHERHOOD.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+The first months of Marriage--Incidents and anecdotes--The adoption of
+Penny postage--The Inauguration of Steam Railway travel--The Duchess of
+Kent takes a separate residence--Prince Albert presides at a meeting
+favoring the abolition of the Slave Trade.
+
+
+In this mere sketch of the great life of the Queen of England, I can give
+little space to the political questions and events of her reign,
+important and momentous as some of them were, even for other lands and
+other people than the English. For a clear and concise account of those
+questions and events, I refer my readers to "A History of Our Own Times,"
+by Justin McCarthy, M.P. I know nothing so admirable of its kind. But
+mine must be something less ambitious--a personal and domestic history--
+light, gossipy, superficial, as regards the profound mysteries of
+politics; in short, "pure womanly."
+
+I shall not even treat of the great wars which stormed over the
+Continent, and upset and set up thrones, except as they affected the life
+of my illustrious subject. At first they seemed to form a lurid
+background to the bright pictures of peace and love presented by her
+happy marriage and maternity, and afterwards in the desolation and
+mourning they brought, seemed in keeping with the sorrow of her
+widowhood.
+
+Happily all was quiet and peace in the United Kingdom, and in the world
+at large, when the honeymoon began for that august but simple-hearted
+pair of lovers, Victoria and Albert; or, as she would have preferred to
+write it, Albert and Victoria. The fiery little spurt of revolt in
+Canada, called rather ambitiously, "The Canadian Rebellion," had ended in
+smoke, and the outburst of Chartism, from the spontaneous combustion of
+sullen and long-smothered discontent among the working classes, had been
+extinguished, partly by a fog of misapprehension and misdirection, partly
+by a process of energetic stamping out. The shameful Chinese opium war,
+the Cabul disasters, and the fearful Sepoy rebellion were, as yet, only
+slow, simmering horrors in the black caldron of the Fates. Irish
+starvation had not set in, in its acute form, and Irish sedition was, as
+yet, taking only the form of words--the bold, eloquent, magnificent, but
+not malignant and scarcely menacing words of Daniel O'Connell In the
+Infernal Council Chamber below, the clock whose hours are epochs of
+crime, had not yet struck for the era of political assassination. France
+was resting and cooling from the throes and fires of revolution, and
+growing the vine over its old lava courses. The citizen-King and his
+family were setting an example of domestic affection and union, of
+morality, thrift, and forehandedness--diligently making hay while the
+fickle sun of French loyalty was shining. Italy was lying deathly quiet
+under the mailed foot of Austria, and under the paternal foot of the old
+Pope, shod with a velvet slipper, cross-embroidered, but leaden-soled;
+Garibaldi was fighting for liberty in "the golden South Americas";
+Mazzini was yet dreaming of liberty--so was Kossuth. Russia was quietly
+gathering herself up for new leaps of conquest tinder her most imperial,
+inflexible autocrat--the inscrutable, unsmiling Nicholas.
+
+In England and America it was, though a peaceful, a stirring and an
+eventful time. English manufacturers, not content with leveling mountains
+of American cotton bales, converting them into textile fabrics and
+clothing the world therewith, were reaching deep and deeper into the
+bowels of the earth, and pulling up sterner stuff to spin into gigantic
+threads with which to lace together all the provinces and cities of the
+realm. That captive monster, Steam, though in the early days of its
+servitude, was working well in harness, while in America Morse was after
+the lightning, lassoing it with his galvanic wires. In England the steam-
+dragon had begun by killing one of his keepers, and was distrusted by
+most English people, who still preferred post-horses and stage-coaches--
+all the good old ways beloved by hostel-keepers, Tony Welters, postilions
+and pot-boys. There was something fearful, supernatural, almost profane
+and Providence-defying in this new, swift, wild, and whizzing mode of
+conveyance. Churchmen and Tories were especially set against it; yet I
+have been told that later, that Prince of conservatives, F. M., the Duke
+of Wellington, did, on the occasion of one of Her Majesty's
+_accouchements_ travel from London to Windsor, at the rate of
+seventy-five miles an hour, in order to be in at the birth! What were the
+perils of Waterloo to this daring, dizzying journey?
+
+Just a month before the Queen's marriage there occurred in London a union
+yet more auspicious, not alone for England, but for all Christendom. It
+was the wedding, by act of Parliament, of Knowledge and Humanity in the
+cheap postage reform--carried through with wonderful ability, energy,
+persistence, and pluck by Rowland Hill; blessed be his memory. The Queen
+afterwards knighted him, but he did not need the honor, though I doubt
+not it was pleasant, coming from her hands. The simple name of the dear
+old man was full of dignity, and long before had been stamped--penny-
+stamped, on the heart of the world.
+
+So it seemed that life smiled on and around the royal wedded pair on that
+winter afternoon, so unwintry to them, when they took leave of relations
+and wedding guests at Buckingham Palace, and set out for Windsor Castle.
+Even the heavens which had wept in the morning with those who wept,
+changed its mood, and smiled on bride and bridegroom, as they drove forth
+in an open carriage and four, followed by other open carriages containing
+a picked suite of friends and attendants--all with favor-decked
+postilions and footmen in the royal red liveries, and everything grand
+and gay. The Queen was dressed in a white satin _pelisse_, profusely
+trimmed with swan's-down. She seems, in those days, to have been very
+fond of nestling down under that soft, warm, dainty sort of a wrap. How
+like a white dove she must have looked that day, for her bonnet was
+white, trimmed with white, plumes. Prince Albert wore a fur-trimmed coat,
+with a high collar, and had a very high hat, which for the most part was
+in his hand, so much saluting was he obliged to do to the saluting
+multitude.
+
+All the world was abroad that day--great was the flow of good feeling,
+and mighty was the flow of good ale, while the whole air of the Kingdom
+was vibrating with the peal of merry marriage-bells. All through the land
+free dinners were provided for the poor--good roast beef, plum-pudding--
+'alf and 'alf fare--and I am afraid the Queen's pauper-subjects would
+have been unwilling to have the occasion indefinitely repeated, with such
+observances,--would not have objected to Her Majesty proving a female
+Henry VIII.
+
+Victoria and Albert drove that afternoon more than twenty miles between
+ranks of frantically loyal, rejoicing people,--past countless festive
+decorations, and a world of "_V_"s and "_A_"s--under arches so
+gay that one wondered where and how at that season all the flowers and
+foliage were produced,--if nature had not hurried up her spring work, so
+as to be able to come to the wedding. The Queen turned now and then her
+happy face on her shouting subjects, in graceful acknowledgment of their
+sympathy with her happiness; but much of the time she was observed to be
+regarding her husband, intently or furtively. So she had betrayed her
+heart during She marriage ceremony, when, as an eye-witness records, she
+"was observed to look frequently at Prince Albert,--in fact, she scarcely
+ever took her eyes off him." I suppose she found him "goodly to look
+upon." It is certain that she worshiped him with her eyes, as well as
+with her heart and soul,--then and ever after. For the world, even for
+the Court, he grew, as the pitiless, pilfering years went by, a little
+too stout, and somewhat bald, while his complexion lost something of its
+fine coloring and smoothness, and his eyes their fulness,--but for her,
+he seems to have always kept the grace and glory of his youth. Even when
+he was dying-when the gray twilight of the fast-coming night was creeping
+over his face, clouding the light of his eyes, chilling the glow of his
+smile--his beauty was still undimmed for her. She says in her pathetic
+account of those sad moments--"his beautiful face, more beautiful than
+ever, is grown so thin."
+
+But on this their wedding-day, death and death-bed partings were far
+enough from the thoughts of the royal lovers. Life was theirs,--young
+life, in all its fulness and richness of health, and hope, and joy, and
+that "perfect, love, which casteth out fear."
+
+So essentially young and so light-hearted were they, that they laughingly
+welcomed the crowd of shouting, leaping, hat-waving, mad Eton boys, who
+as they neared Windsor, turned out to receive them. The Queen jotted down
+this jolly incident in her journal thus: "The boys in a body accompanied
+the carriage to the castle, cheering and shouting as only schoolboys can.
+They swarmed up the mound, as the carriage entered the quadrangle, and,
+as the Queen and the Prince descended at the grand entrance, they made
+the old castle ring again with their acclamations."
+
+What would Queen Charlotte, or any of the stiff, formal Dutch Queens of
+any of the Georges have thought of such a boisterous wedding escort,--of
+such a noisy welcome to stately Windsor? They would very likely have
+said, "Go away, naughty _pays_! How dare you!"
+
+Alas, this royal pair, natural, joyous, girl-like and boy-like as they
+were still were slaves to, their station. They could not long hide
+themselves from the million-eyed world. In a few days the Court came down
+upon them from London. "Mamma" came with them--and I hope that she, at
+least, was welcome. Then followed show and ceremony, and amusements of
+the common, unpoetic, unparadisiacal, Courtly order. There were "fiddling
+and dancing every night," and feasting, and full-dressing, and all that.
+Still nothing seems to have interfered much with the Queen's happiness
+and content, for Lady Lyttleton wrote of her about this time,--"I
+understand she is in extremely high spirits. Such a new thing for her to
+dare to be unguarded in conversing with anybody, and with her frank and
+fearless nature, the restraints she has hitherto been under, from one
+reason or another, with everybody, must have been most painful."
+
+Only the day after her marriage, the Queen wrote to Baron Stockmar:
+"There cannot exist a purer, dearer, nobler being in the world than the
+Prince."
+
+She never took those words back--she never had cause to take them back,
+to lie heavy on her heart. But such utter adoration persisted in year
+after year, with cheerful obstinacy, even against the modest protests of
+the object, would have spoiled any man who was spoilable.
+
+Her Majesty was soon obliged to return to London, in order to hold
+Courts, to receive addresses of congratulation on her marriage. It seemed
+that half the men of the Kingdom of any standing, had formed themselves
+into delegations. So numerous were they, that Prince Albert was obliged
+to "come up to the help of the QUEEN against the mighty"--bore, for she
+records that he in one day received and personally answered no less than
+twenty-seven addresses! In fact, he was nearly addressed to death.
+
+The Queen after receiving many members of both Houses of Parliament,
+bearing addresses--received large delegations from the State Church--the
+General Assembly of the Church of Scotland--the English Non-Conformists,
+and the Society of Friends--all walking peacefully enough together to the
+throne of Victoria, but having widely different ways to the "throne of
+grace;"--all uniting in loyal prayers for the divine blessing on the fair
+head of their Sovereign, and in the hope that the comely young man of her
+choice might do virtuously, and walk humbly, and gingerly by her side--
+but a little in the rear, as became him; not, of course, as a husband,
+Scripturally regarded, but as the German Consort of an English Queen
+_regnant_.
+
+This subordinate view of her husband's place the Queen did not fully
+accept from anybody, at any time. At that period, it is probable she
+would have gladly taken off the crown, to place it on his dear head, and
+doffed the ermine mantle to put it on his manly shoulders, and would have
+been the first to swear allegiance to "King Albert."
+
+She thought that he might, at least, have the title of "King-Consort,"
+and perhaps because of this hope, she deferred for years--till 1857--
+conferring on him, by Royal Letters Patent, the title of Prince-Consort.
+
+Doubtless the English people, if they had been on the lookout for a King,
+might have gone farther and fared worse,--but the four Georges had
+somehow got them out of conceit with the word "King," and William, the
+Sailor, had not quite reconciled them to it;--then they were jealous of
+foreigners, and last, but not least, there were apprehensions that the
+larger title would necessitate a larger grant. But the Prince did not
+need the empty honor, which in his position would have been "a
+distinction without a difference." I do not believe he cared much for it,
+though titles are usually dear to the Teutonic soul, determined, as he
+always so wisely was, to "sink his individuality in that of the Queen,"
+and when at last, the second best title of Prince-Consort, that by which
+the people already named him, was made his legal right, by his fond wife,
+grieved to have kept
+
+  --"the best man under the sun,
+  So many years from his due,"
+
+he was well content, because it pleased her.
+
+The Queen certainly did all she constitutionally could to confer honors
+on her husband, who after all outdid her, and best honored himself.
+
+Before their marriage, she had invested him with the noble order of the
+Garter, and given him the Star, and the Badge, and the Garter itself set
+in diamonds. She now invested him with the insignia of a Knight Grand
+Cross of the Order of the Bath. It amused her, this investing--she would
+have liked to invent a few orders, for royal Albert's sake--he became the
+insignia so well! She also made him Colonel of the 11th Regiment of Light
+Dragoons--he rode so well!--and she had the name changed to "Prince
+Albert's Own Hussars."
+
+Everywhere the Queen and Prince appeared together--at reviews and art
+exhibitions, at church and at the theatre (for the Queen was very fond of
+the drama in those days), at drawing-rooms and at races--and everywhere
+the people delighted in their beauty and their happiness.
+
+Early in April, the Duchess of Kent, in pursuance of what she deemed her
+duty, and best for the young people, parted from her darling daughter,
+and took up her residence in a separate home in London--Ingestrie House.
+She afterwards occupied Clarence House, the present residence of the Duke
+of Edinburgh. When the Court was at Windsor, the Duchess resided at
+Frogmore, a very lovely place, belonging to the royal estate, and so near
+the Castle that she was able to dine and lunch with Victoria almost
+daily. Still the partial separation was a trial for a mother and daughter
+so closely and tenderly attached, and they both took it hard,--as did,
+about that time, Prince Albert his separation from his brother Ernest,
+whose long visit was over. The Queen's account of the exceeding
+sorrowfulness of that parting must now bring to the lips of the most
+sentimental reader, though "a man and a brother," an unsympathetic smile--
+unless he happens to remember that those were the earliest days of steam
+on sea and land, and that journeys from England to any part of the
+Continent were no light undertakings. So the brothers sung together a
+mournful college song, and embraced, kissing one another on both cheeks,
+doubtless, after the German fashion,--"poor Albert being pale as a sheet,
+and his eyes full of tears." Ah, what would he have said could his
+"prophetic soul" have beheld his son, Albert Edward, skipping from London
+to Paris in eight hours--dashing about the Continent, from Copenhagen to
+Cannes, from Brussels to Berlin--from Homburg to St. Petersburg--taking
+it all as lightly and gaily as a school-boy takes a "jolly lark" of a
+holiday trip to Brighton or Margate! That was not the day of
+peregrinating Princes. Now they are as plenty as commercial travelers.
+
+Early in June the Queen and Prince and their Court left busy, smoky
+London for a few days of quiet and pure air at lovely Claremont. They
+spent part of that restful time in going to the Derby, in four carriages
+and four with outriders and postilions--a brave sight to see.
+
+On the first of June, Prince Albert was invited to preside at a great
+public meeting in Exeter Hall, for the abolition of the Slave Trade--and
+he did preside, and made a good speech, which he had practiced over to
+the Queen in the morning. That was an ordeal, for he spoke in English for
+the first time, and before a very large and distinguished audience. It
+was a very young "Daniel come to judgment" on an ancient wrong--for the
+Prince was not yet of age.
+
+That sweet Quakeress, Caroline Fox, thus speaks of the Prince on this
+interesting occasion, in her delightful "Memories":--"Prince Albert was
+received with tremendous applause, but bore his honors with calm and
+modest dignity. He is certainly a very beautiful man,--a thorough German,
+and a fine poetical specimen of the race."
+
+Ah, what would that doughty champion of the Slave Trade, William IV.,
+have said, could he have seen his niece's husband giving royal
+countenance to such a fanatical, radical gathering! It was enough to make
+him stir irefully in his coffin at Windsor.
+
+But for that matter, could our ancestors generally, men and women who
+devoutly believed in the past, and died in the odor of antiquity, know of
+our modern goings-on, in political and humanitarian reforms--know of our
+"Science so called," and social ethics, there would be "a rattling among
+the dry bones," not only in royal vaults, but in country churchyards,
+where "_The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep._"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Death passes by--Life comes.
+
+
+On the 10th of June, 1840, occurred the first mad attempt to assassinate
+Queen Victoria--made as she and Prince Albert were driving up
+Constitution Hill, near Buckingham Palace, in a small open phaeton.
+Prince Albert, in a letter to his grandmamma, gives the clearest account
+of it. He says: "We had hardly proceeded a hundred yards from the Palace,
+when I noticed, on the foot-path on my side, a little, mean-looking man,
+holding something toward us, and, before I could distinguish what it was,
+a shot was fired, which almost stunned us both, it was so loud--barely
+six paces from us. ... The horses started, and the carriage stopped. I
+seized Victoria's hands and asked if the fright, had not shaken her, but
+she laughed."
+
+Almost immediately the fellow fired a second shot, from which the Queen
+was saved probably by the presence of mind of the Prince, who drew her
+down beside him. He states that the ball must have passed just over her
+head. The wretch was at once arrested and taken away, and soon after
+committed for trial, on the charge of high treason. The Queen was seen to
+be very pale, but calm. She rose in the carriage to show the excited
+people that she was not hurt, and then ordered the postilions to drive at
+once to Ingestrie House, that the Duchess of Kent might hear of the
+startling incident first from her and not be frightened by wild rumors.
+It was a thoughtful and filial act, and brave, moreover, for there were
+those about her who suspected that there might be a revolutionary
+conspiracy, and that Oxford was only one of many banded assassins. These
+alarmists advised her and her husband to show themselves abroad as little
+as possible. How they heeded this advice is shown in another passage of
+Prince Albert's letter: "We arrived safely at Aunt Kent's. From thence we
+took a drive through the Park, to give Victoria a little air,--also to
+show the people that we had not, on account of what had happened, lost
+confidence in them."
+
+The Prince does not mention a very pretty incident which I find recorded
+elsewhere. As the Queen's carriage reached the Park, it was received with
+enthusiastic cheers, smiles, and tears by crowds of people, equestrians
+and pedestrians, and the gay world on wheels; and as they neared the
+Marble Arch, the gentlemen and ladies on horseback followed them as with
+one impulse--all Rotton Row turned out, and escorted them to Buckingham
+Palace. It is said, too, that for several days this was repeated--that
+whenever the Queen and Prince drove out they were escorted by this
+singular volunteer body-guard.
+
+Of course, the whole country was excited, and the Queen, whose life had
+been menaced, was more popular than ever. They say that her first visit
+to the opera after this shocking attempt was a most memorable occasion.
+Her reception was something almost overwhelming. The audience were all on
+their feet, cheering and shouting, and waving handkerchiefs and hats, and
+there was no quieting them till the National Anthem was sung--and even
+then, they broke in with wild cheers at the close of every verse. Her
+Majesty stood throughout these demonstrations, bowing and smiling, her
+heart melted within her, I doubt not.
+
+Of course there was no conspiracy, and Oxford the pot-boy, "a pot-boy
+was, and, nothing more." He was acquitted on the ground of insanity, but
+ordered to be confined "during Her Majesty's pleasure," which he was in
+Bedlam for some years. Then he was sent to Australia as cured, and where
+he went into better business than shooting Queens, and earned an honest
+living, they say. He always declared that he was not insane, except from
+a mad passion for notoriety--which he got.
+
+The five or six successors of Oxford who have shot at Her Majesty, and
+that wretched retired officer, Robert Pate, who waylaid her in 1850, and
+struck her a cruel blow across the face with a walking-stick, were
+pronounced insane, and confined in mad-houses merely. The English are too
+proud and politic to admit that a sane man can lift his hand against the
+Constitutional Sovereign of England. When there arrived in London the
+news of the shooting of President Garfield, a distinguished English
+gentleman said to me, "I think we will not be annexed to the United
+States while you shoot your Presidents."
+
+I replied by reminding him of the many attempts on the life of his
+beloved Queen, adding, "I believe the homicidal mania is a Monarchical as
+well as a Republican affliction,--the difference only is that, unhappily
+for us, our madmen are the better shots."
+
+It must be that for monarchists born and bred, an anointed head, whether
+covered by a silk hat or a straw bonnet, is circled by a
+_simulacrum_ of a crown, which dazzles the aim of the would-be regicide,
+they are so almost certain to miss, at long or short range. Alas there is
+no halo of sovereignty or "hedge of divinity" about our poor Presidents!
+It is, perhaps, because of this unsteadiness of nerve and aim, that
+Continental regicides are taking to sterner and surer means--believing
+that no thrice blessed crown can dazzle off dynamite, and that no most
+imperial "divinity" is bomb-proof.
+
+In July an act which was the shadow of a coming event, was passed by
+Parliament, and received the Royal assent. It provided that Prince Albert
+should be Regent in case that the Queen should die before her next lineal
+descendant should attain the age of eighteen years.
+
+In August the Queen prorogued Parliament for the first time since her
+marriage, and she brought her handsome husband to show to all the Lords
+and gentlemen--bravely attired in his Field-Marshal's uniform, with his
+Collars of the Garter and the Bath, and diamond Stars--and she had him
+seated only a little lower than herself and very near, in a splendid
+chair, gilded, carved, and velvet-cushioned. The Prince wrote to his
+father as a piece of good news, "The prorogation of Parliament passed off
+very quietly." He had had reason to fear that his right to sit in that
+lofty seat would be disputed--that the old Duke of Sussex might come
+hobbling up to the throne, calling out, "I object! I object!"
+
+But nothing of the kind happened. The Queen, by her wit and her courage,
+had circumvented all the royal old sticklers for precedence--who put
+etiquette before nature. The Queen's mother, and her uncle and aunt, the
+King and Queen of Belgium, were present,--so it was quite a family-party.
+The good Uncle Leopold was observed to smile benignly on both Victoria
+and Albert, as though well pleased with his work. The Queen was most
+magnificently attired with all her glories on, in the shape of diamonds
+and orders, and looked very proud and happy,--and yet there was a dreamy,
+half-troubled expression in her eyes at times, which was not usual, but
+which her mother understood.
+
+On this day, Prince Albert's _status_ was fixed. He had taken a ride
+with his wife, in the State-carriage, with the twelve cream-colored,
+long-tailed State horses, and the gorgeous footmen, and he had sat
+higher, and nearer the throne than any other man in the House of Lords,
+Prince or Peer. The next thing the Queen did for him was to make him a
+member of the Privy Council. But a little later, he had a higher
+promotion than that; for, on the 21st of November, the Princess Royal was
+born in Buckingham Palace, in the early afternoon.
+
+During the morning the Duchess of Kent had been sent for--and came
+hurrying over. They also sent for the Duke of Sussex, the Archbishop of
+Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Melbourne,
+Lord Palmerston, Lord Errol, Lord Albemarle--Lord John Russell, and other
+Privy Councillors, whose constitutional duty it is to be present at the
+birth of an heir to the throne of England,--and they came bustling in, as
+old ladies come together on a like occasion in country places in New
+England. It is probable they all looked for a boy. The girl was an
+extraordinary baby, however, for when she was barely two days old, her
+papa wrote to her grandpapa at Coburg, "The little one is very well and
+very merry." The Prince welcomed her in a fatherly way, though, as he
+confesses, sorry that she was the same sort of a human creature as her
+mother,--that is, a daughter instead of a son. He wrote to his father
+very frankly, "I should certainly have liked it better if she had been a
+son, as would Victoria also," and so, strangely enough, would the English
+people--unfortunate as they had often been with their Kings, and
+fortunate as they had always been with their Queens. The great officers
+of the Church and State went away probably saying, "Only a girl!" Dear
+"little Pussie," as she was often called, wouldn't have been so "merry"
+if she had known how it was. She was looked upon as a temporary stop-gap-
+-something to keep out Cumberland, and naturally she did not have so many
+silver cups and gold spoons as she would have had if she had been a boy--
+nor so many guns, poor thing! When the firing ceased at the feminine
+limit, people all over the city said, "Only a girl!"
+
+Some years later, when, at the birth of one of her brothers, the guns
+were booming away, Douglas Jerrold exclaimed to a friend at dinner: "How
+they do powder these royal babies!"
+
+The Queen in her journal gives a beautiful account of her husband's
+devotion to her during her illness. She says, always speaking of herself
+in the third person: "During the time the Queen was laid up, his care and
+devotion were quite beyond expression. He refused to go to the play, or
+anywhere else; generally dining alone with the Duchess of Kent, till the
+Queen was able to join them, and was always on hand to do anything in his
+power for her comfort. He was content to sit by her in a darkened room,
+to read to her or write for her. No one but himself ever lifted her from
+her bed to her sofa, and he always helped to wheel her on her sofa into
+the next room. For this purpose he would come instantly when sent for
+from any part of the house. As years went on, and he became overwhelmed
+with work, this was often done at much inconvenience to himself (for his
+attentions were the same in all the Queen's subsequent confinements), but
+he always came with a sweet smile on his face. In short," the Queen adds,
+"his care of her was like that of a mother, nor could there be a kinder,
+wiser, or more judicious nurse."
+
+The Prince also during the Queen's illness, conferred with her ministers,
+and transacted all necessary business for her. There were nine of these
+natural illnesses. I commend the example of the Prince-Consort to the
+husbands of America, to husbands all over the world.
+
+It was a glad and grateful Christmas which they spent in Windsor that
+year--the first after their marriage,--the first since their union, so
+pompously and piously blessed by priests and people, had been visibly
+blessed by Heaven.
+
+The next month the Queen opened Parliament in person, and gave the Lords
+and gentlemen another elocutionary treat in her admirable reading of her
+speech,--that "most excellent thing in woman," a sweet voice, telling
+even on the Tories. Prince Albert was with her, of course, and she looked
+even prouder and happier than usual. She had found yet new honors for
+herself and for him,--the most noble and ancient orders of Maternity and
+Paternity,--exceeding old, and yet always new.
+
+That day the young Prince may have felt glowing in his heart a sweet
+prescience of the peculiar comfort and joy he afterwards found in the
+loving devotion and noble character of his firstborn, that little
+blessing that _would_ come, though "only a girl."
+
+That day the Queen wore in her diadem a new jewel, a "pearl of great
+price,"--a pure little human soul.
+
+That faithful stand-by, King Leopold, came over to stand as chief sponsor
+at the christening of the Princess Royal,--which took place at Buckingham
+Palace, on the anniversary of her mother's marriage. The little girl, who
+received the names of Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa, is said by her
+father to have behaved "with great propriety and like a Christian."
+
+So ended the first year of Queen Victoria's married life. To say it had
+been a happy year would seem, after the records we have, to put a very
+inadequate estimate on its degree of harmony and content--and yet it were
+much to say of any marriage, during the trying period in which many of
+the tastes and habits of two separate lives must be harmonized, and some
+heroically abandoned. It is a period of readjustment and sacrifice.
+Redundant and interfering growths of character must be pruned away, and
+yet if the lopping process is carried too far, character itself must
+suffer, the juices of its life and power, individuality and will, are
+wasted.
+
+The Queen always contended that it was the Prince who made all the
+sacrifices--unselfishly adjusting his life and character to suit hers,
+and her position--yet not long after her marriage she records the fact
+that she was beginning to sympathize with him in his peculiar tastes,
+particularly in his love for a quiet country life. She says: "I told
+Albert that formerly I was too happy to go to London, and wretched to
+leave it; and now since the blessed hour of my marriage, and still more
+since the summer, I dislike and am unhappy to leave the country, and
+could be content and happy never to go to town. This pleased him."
+
+I am afraid that there are those of Her Majesty's subjects who bless not
+the memory of "Albert the Good," for this metamorphose of their once gay
+and thoughtless, ball-giving, riding, driving, play-going Queen. These
+malcontents are Londoners proper, mostly tradesmen, newspaper men,
+milliners, and Hyde Park idlers. I think American visitors and Cook's
+tourists are among those who hold that the Queen's proper place is in her
+capital--at least during the season while _they_ are here.
+
+Upon the whole, I should say of that first year of Queen Victoria's
+married life, that the honeymoon lasted throughout those twelve bright
+and busy (perhaps bright because busy) months. Or, it would seem that
+some fairy Godmother had come to that wedding, in homely guise, bringing
+as her humble gift, a jar of honey--but a miraculous jar, the honey
+gathered from Arcadian flowers, and which perpetually renewed itself,
+like the poor widow's blessed cruse of oil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+The Boy "Jones" and his singular pranks--A change in the Ministry--Sir
+Robert Peel becomes Premier--Prince Albert made Chairman of the Fine Arts
+Commission--Birth of the Prince of Wales--The Queen commemorates the
+event by a beautiful act.
+
+
+The next sensation in connection with the Court was the discovery of the
+famous "boy Jones" in Buckingham Palace. This singular young personage
+was by no means a stranger in the Palace. He had made himself very
+familiar with, and at home in that august mansion, about two years
+before. He was then arrested, and had lived an exceedingly retired life
+ever since. On that first occasion he was discovered by one of the
+porters, very early one morning, leisurely surveying one of the
+apartments. He was caught and searched; nothing of any consequence was
+found on him, but in a hall was a bundle, evidently made up by him,
+containing such incongruous articles as old letters, a sword, and a pot
+of bear's grease. He had he appearance of a sweep, being very sooty, but
+disclaimed the chimney-cleaning profession. He had occupied, for a while,
+the vacant room of one of the Equerries, leaving in the bed the impress
+of his sooty figure. He declared that he had not entered the Palace for
+the purpose of theft, but only to gratify his curiosity, as to how royal
+people and "great swells" like royal footmen, lived. The young rascal's
+examination before the Magistrate caused much amusement. In answer to
+questions, he admitted, or boasted that he had been in the Palace
+previously, and for days at a time--in fact, had "put up" there--adding,
+"And a very comfortable place I found it. I used to hide behind the
+furniture and up the chimneys, in the day-time; when night came, I walked
+about, went into the kitchen, and got my food, I have seen the Queen and
+her ministers in Council, and heard all they had to say."
+
+Magistrate: "Do you mean to say you have worn but one shirt all the
+time?"
+
+Prisoner: "Yes; when it was dirty, I washed it out in the kitchen. The
+apartment I like best is the drawing-room."
+
+Magistrate: "You are a sweep, are you?"
+
+Prisoner: "Oh, no; it's only my face and hands that are dirty; that's
+from sleeping in the chimneys.... I know my way all over the Palace, and
+have been all over it, the Queen's apartments and all. The Queen is very
+fond of politics."
+
+He was such an amusing vagabond, with his jolly ways and boundless
+impudence, and so young, that no very serious punishment was then meted
+out to him, nor even on his second "intrusion," as it was mildly
+denominated, when he was found crouched in a recess, dragged forth, and
+taken to the police-station. This time he said he had hidden under a sofa
+in one of the Queen's private apartments, and had listened to a long
+conversation between her and Prince Albert. He was sent to the House of
+Correction for a few months, in the hope of curing him of his "Palace-
+breaking mania"; but immediately on his liberation, he was found prowling
+about the Palace, drawing nearer and nearer, as though it had been built
+of loadstone. But finally he was induced to go to Australia, where, it is
+said, he grew up to be a well-to-do colonist. Perhaps he met the house-
+painter Oxford there, and they used to talk over their exploits and
+explorations together, after the manner of heroes and adventurers, from
+the time of Ulysses and Æneas. We can imagine the _man_ Jones being
+a particularly entertaining boon companion, with his reminiscences of
+high life, not only below, but above stairs, in Buckingham Palace. That
+he ever made an entrance into those august precincts, and was so long
+undiscovered, certainly speaks not well for the police and domestic
+arrangements of the household; and it is little wonder that Baron
+Stockmar was finally sent for to suggest some plan for the better
+regulation of matters in both the great royal residences. And he did work
+wonders,--though mostly by inspiring others, the proper officers, to
+work. This extraordinary man seemed to have a genius for order,
+discipline, economy, and dispatch. He found the palaces grand
+"circumlocution offices,"--with, in all the departments, an entangling
+network of red-tape, which needed to be swept away like cobwebs. He
+himself entered the Royal Nursery finally with the besom of reform. It is
+said in his "Memoirs"--"The organization and superintendence of the
+children's department occupied a considerable portion of Stockmar's
+time"; and he wrote, "The Nursery gives me more trouble than the
+government of a King would do." Very likely the English nurses and maids
+questioned among themselves the right of an old German doctor to meddle
+with their affairs, and dictate what an English Princess Royal should
+eat, drink, and wear; but they lived to see the Baron's care and skill
+make of a delicate child--"a pretty, pale, erect little creature," as she
+is described, a ruddy and robust little girl, of whom the Baron wrote:
+"She is as round as a little barrel"; of whom the mother wrote: "Pussy's
+cheeks are on the point of bursting, they have grown so red and plump."
+
+After the domestic reforms in the Palace, no such adventure could have
+happened to a guest as that recorded by M. Guizot, who having been unable
+to summon a servant to conduct him to his room at night, wandered about
+the halls like poor Mr. Pickwick at the inn, and actually blundered into
+Her Majesty's own dressing-room. The boy Jones, too, had had his day.
+
+At the very time of the "intrusions" into Buckingham Palace, there was in
+London another young man, with a "mania for Palace-breaking," of a
+somewhat different sort. He, too, was "without visible means of support,"
+but nobody called him a vagabond, or a burglar, but only an adventurer,
+or a "pretender." He had his eye particularly on Royal Windsor, and once
+a cruel hoax was played off upon him, in the shape of a forged invitation
+to one of the Queen's grand entertainments at the Castle. He got himself
+up in Court costume, with the aid of a friend, and went, to be told by
+the royal porter that his name was not down on the list, and afterwards
+by a higher officer of the household that really there must be some
+mistake, for Her Majesty had not the honor of knowing him, so could not
+receive him. We shall see how it was when he came again, nine or ten
+years later.
+
+But after all, the French royal palaces were more to this young man's
+taste, for he was French. He longed to break into the Tuileries--not to
+hide behind, or under any furniture, but to sit on the grandest piece of
+furniture there. He had a strange longing for St. Cloud, and
+Fontainebleau, and even stately Versailles. Said of him one English
+statesman to another, "Did you ever know such a fool as that fellow is?
+Why, he really believes he will yet be Emperor of France."
+
+That "fellow" was Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.
+
+In August of this year, the Whig Ministry finding themselves a minority
+in the new Parliament, resigned, and a Conservative one was formed, with
+Sir Robert Peel as Premier. It came hard for the Queen to part with her
+favorite Minister and faithful friend, Lord Melbourne, but she soon
+became reconciled to his Tory successor, and things went on very
+harmoniously. The benign influence and prudent counsels of Prince Albert,
+with some lessons of experience, and much study of her constitutional
+restrictions, as well as obligations, had greatly modified Her Majesty's
+strong partisan prejudices, and any proclivities she may have had toward
+personal and irresponsible government.
+
+One great thing in favor of the new Minister, was that he thoroughly
+appreciated Prince Albert. One of his early acts was to propose a Fine
+Arts Commission--having for its chief, immediate object, the
+superintendence of the artistic work on the new Houses of Parliament.
+This was formed--composed of some of the most eminent artists and
+_connaisseurs_ in the kingdom, and Prince Albert was the chairman.
+He used to speak of this as his "initiation into public life." The Queen
+rejoiced in it, as in every stage of her husband's advance--which it is
+only just to say was the advance of the liberal arts in England, as well
+as of social and political reforms. I believe it is not generally known
+that to the humane influence of the Prince-Consort with the Duke of
+Wellington, was owing the new military regulation which finally put an
+end to duelling in the English army. Lord, keep his memory green!
+
+The second year of the Queen's marriage wore on to November, and again
+the Archbishops and Bishops, the statesmen and "Medicine men," the good
+mother-in-law, and the nurses were summoned by the anxious Prince to
+Buckingham Palace. This time it was a boy, and the holy men and wise men
+felt that they had not come out so early in the morning and waited four
+hours in an ante-room for nothing. Prince Albert was overjoyed. Everybody
+at the Palace was wild with delight, so wild that there was great
+confusion. Messengers were dispatched right and left to royal relatives.
+It is said that no less than three arrived within as many minutes, at
+Marlborough House, to acquaint the Queen Dowager of the happy event. As
+they came in breathless, one after another, Her Majesty might have
+supposed that Victoria and Albert had been blessed with triplets. The
+biggest guns boomed the glad tidings over London,--the Privy Council
+assembled to consider a form of prayer and thanksgiving, to relieve the
+overcharged hearts of the people; the bells in all the churches rang
+joyous peals. So was little Albert Edward ushered into the kingdom he is
+to rule in God's own time.
+
+No such ado was made over the seven brothers and sisters who came after;
+but they were made welcome and comfortable, as, alas! few children can be
+made, even by loving hearts and willing hands. The Queen may have thought
+of this, and of what a sorry chance some poor little human creatures
+have, from the beginning, for she did a beautiful thing on this occasion.
+She notified the Home Secretary that all those convicts who had behaved
+well, should have their punishment commuted, and that those deserving
+clemency, on the horrible prison-hulks, should have their liberty at
+once. She had a right to be happy, and that she was happy, a beautiful
+picture in her journal shows:
+
+"Albert brought in dearest little Pussy, in such a smart, white morino
+dress, trimmed with blue, which mama had given her, and a pretty cap, and
+placed her on my bed, seating himself next to her, and she was very dear
+and good, and as my precious invaluable Albert sat there, and our little
+love between us, I felt quite moved with happiness and gratitude to
+God.".
+
+The next month she wrote from Windsor Castle to her Uncle Leopold: "I
+wonder very much whom our little boy will be like. You will understand
+how fervent are my prayers, and I am sure everybody's must be, to see him
+resemble his father, in every respect, both in mind and body." Later
+still she writes: "We all have our trials and vexations--but if _one's
+home is happy_, then the rest is comparatively nothing."
+
+They had an unusually merry Christmas-time at Windsor, and they danced
+into the new year, in the old English style--only varying it by a very
+poetic and impressive German custom. As the clock struck twelve, a
+flourish of trumpets was blown.
+
+The Prince of Wales was christened in the Royal Chapel, at Windsor, with
+the greatest state and splendor, King Frederick William of Prussia, who
+had come over for the purpose, standing as chief sponsor. Then followed
+all sorts of grand festivities and parades--both at Windsor and in
+London. The Queen did honor to her "brother of Prussia" in every possible
+way--in banquets and balls, in proroguing Parliament, in holding a
+Chapter of the Garter, and investing him with the splendid insignia of
+the Order, and in having a grand inspection for him, of "Prince Albert's
+Own Hussars," he being a little in the military line himself.
+
+Among the suite of the Prussian King was Baron Alexander Von Humboldt.
+The great _savant_ was treated by the Queen and the Prince with
+distinguished consideration, then and ever after. The Prince, on hearing
+of his death in 1859, wrote to the Crown Princess: "What a loss is the
+excellent Humboldt! You and Berlin will miss him greatly. People of this
+kind do not grow on every bush, and they are the glory and the grace of a
+country and a century." When the Baron's private correspondence was
+published, and found to contain certain slurs and sarcasms regarding him,
+and, as he affirmed, misrepresentations--probably based on
+misunderstandings of his political opinions--the Prince showed no
+resentment, though he must have been wounded. I know nothing more
+sensible and charitable in all his admirable private writings, than his
+few words on this unpleasant incident. He says: "The matter is really of
+no consequence, for what does not one write or say to his intimate
+friends, under the impulse of the moment. But the publication is a great
+indiscretion. How many deadly enemies may be made if publicity be given
+to what one man has said of another, or perhaps has _not_ said!"
+
+But what does it matter to the dead, how many "deadly enemies" are made?
+They have us at unfair advantage. We may deny, we may cry out, but we
+cannot make them apologize, or retract, or modify the cruel sarcasm, or
+more cruel ridicule. They seem to stealthily open the door of the tomb,
+to shoot Parthian arrows at the very mourners who have just piled wreaths
+before it. Carlyle fired a perfect _mitrailleuse_ from his grave.
+The Prince's English biographer calls the Humboldt publication
+"scandalous." Yet the English, who sternly condemn the most kindly
+personalities of living authors (especially American authors), seem to
+have rather a relish for these peppery posthumous revelations of genius,
+--often saddening post-mortem exhibitions of its own moral weaknesses and
+disease. No great English author dies nowadays, without his most
+attached, faithful and familiar friends being in mortal terror lest they
+be found spitted on the sharp shafts of his, or worse, _her_ satire.
+
+During those Windsor festivities, the little Prince of Wales was shown to
+the people at an upper window and pronounced satisfactory. A Court lady
+described him at the time, as "the most magnificent baby in the Kingdom."
+And perhaps he was. He was fair and plump, with pleasant blue eyes. It
+seems to me that after all the years, he must look to-day, with his
+fresh, open face, a good deal as he did on the day when his nurse dandled
+him at the Castle window. He still has the fairness, the plumpness, the
+pleasant blue eyes. It is true he has not very abundant hair now, but he
+had not much then.
+
+Tytler, the historian, gives a charming picture of him. as he appeared
+some two years later. He was waiting one morning in the corridor at
+Windsor with others to see the Queen, who came in bowing most graciously,
+and having by the hand the Prince of Wales, "trotting on, looking happy
+and merry." When she came to where Mr. Tytler stood, and saw him "bowing
+and looking delightedly" at the little Prince and her, she bowed and said
+to the little boy, "Make a bow, sir!" "When the Queen said this, the Duke
+of Cambridge and the rest stood still, and the little Prince, walking
+straight up to me, made a bow, smiling all the while, and holding out his
+hand, which I immediately took, and bowing low, kissed it." The Queen, he
+added, "smiled affectionately on the little Prince, for the gracious way
+in which he deported himself."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Miscreants and Monarchs--A visit from Mendelssohn--The Queen's first
+visit to Scotland--Anecdote--A trip to France and Belgium--Death of the
+Duke of Sussex and of Prince Albert's father--The Dwarf and the Giant.
+
+
+This year of 1842 was not all joy and festivity. It was the year of the
+massacres of the British forces in Cabul; there was financial distress in
+England, which a charitable masked ball at Buckingham Palace did not
+wholly relieve; and in May occurred the second attempt on the life of the
+Queen--that of John Francis.
+
+The Queen behaved with her own wonderful courage on this occasion--which
+was expected by her and Prince Albert, from their having a strong
+impression that the same wretch had the day before pointed at them, from
+the midst of a crowd, a pistol which had missed fire. They drove out
+alone together, keeping a pretty sharp lookout for the assassin--and at
+last, they saw him just as he fired. The ball passed under the carriage,
+and Francis was at once arrested. Lady Bloomfield, who was then Maid of
+Honor, gives an account of the excitement at the Palace that evening, and
+quotes some words of the Queen, very beautiful because revealing her rare
+consideration for others. She says that Sir Robert Peel was there, and
+showed intense feeling about the risk Her Majesty had run, and that the
+Queen, turning to her, said: "I dare say, Georgy, you were surprised at
+not driving with me to-day--but the fact was, that as we were returning
+from church yesterday, a man presented a pistol at the carriage window.
+It flashed in the pan, and we were so taken by surprise that he had time
+to escape. I knew what was hanging over me to-day, and was determined not
+to expose any life but my own."
+
+Francis was tried and sentenced to death, but through the Queen's
+clemency the sentence was commuted to transportation for life, and the
+very day after, Bean, the hunchback, essayed to shoot Her Majesty with a
+charge of paper and bits of clay-pipe. He was such a miserable, feeble-
+minded creature, that they only gave him eighteen months' imprisonment.
+
+Soon after, the Queen was called to mourn with her aunt of Belgium, and
+the rest of the family of Louis Philippe of France, for the death of the
+Duke of Orleans, who was killed by being thrown from his carriage. If he
+had lived, Louis Napoleon would hardly have been Emperor of France.
+
+So it was hardly a gay summer for the Queen, though she had some
+pleasure, especially in receiving Prince Albert's brother, Ernest, Duke
+of Saxe-Coburg, and his bride, who came to England for their honeymoon.
+They had also a pleasant visit from the great composer, Mendelssohn, who
+thus wrote from Windsor to his mother, "Add to this the pretty and most
+charming Queen Victoria, who looks so youthful, and is so gently
+courteous and gracious, who speaks such good German, and knows all my
+music so well,"--great praise from a Teutonic and Mendelssohnian point of
+view. In the autumn, the Queen and Prince made their first visit to
+Scotland--were received with immense enthusiasm everywhere, and had a
+charming and health-bracing tour. They took Edinburgh by surprise--
+entering the city from the sea, so early in the morning, that the
+authorities, who had made great preparations to receive them, and rain
+flowers and speeches upon them, were still in bed. Still the Queen made
+up for it, by afterwards making a grand State-procession through the
+grand old town. All the country for many miles about, poured into the
+city on that day, and among some amusing anecdotes of the occasion, I
+find this: "A gentleman living near Edinburgh, said to his farm-servant,
+'Well, John, did you see the Queen?' 'Troth did I that, sir.' 'Well,
+what did you think of her?' 'In truth, sir, I was terrible 'feared afore
+she came forrit--my heart was maist in my mouth, but whan she did come
+forrit, I was na feared at a'; I just lookit at her, and she lookit at
+me, an' she bowed her heid at me, an' I bowed my heid at her.'"
+
+The Queen traveled then with a much larger Court than she takes with her
+nowadays, and to this were added the escorts of honor which the great
+Scottish nobles and Highland chiefs furnished her, till it grew to be a
+monster of a caravan. Among the items, I find that in conveying Her
+Majesty and suite from Dalkeith to Taymouth, and from Taymouth back to
+Dalkeith, 656 horses were employed. Yet this was nothing to the number of
+animals engaged on the royal progresses of former times. It is stated
+that 20,000 horses were in all employed in conveying Marie Antoinette,
+her enormous suite and cumbrous belongings, from Vienna to Paris. Poor
+woman!--it took all those horses to bring her into her kingdom, but only
+one to carry her out of her kingdom, _via_ the Place de la
+Revolution.
+
+In the spring of the year following this tour, another Princess was born
+in Buckingham Palace, and christened Alice Maud Mary. The summer went by
+as usual, or even more pleasantly, for every new baby seemed to make this
+family happier and gayer.
+
+Lady Bloomfield gives some charming pictures of the happy home-life at
+Windsor--of the children, pretty, merry, healthy, and well-bred; tells
+very pleasant things of the Queen, and of the sweet and noble Duchess of
+Kent--but gives only now and then, a glimpse of that gracious and
+graceful presence, Prince Albert. Her Majesty made the life of her maids
+of honor almost too easy. No long, tiresome waiting on their poor, tired
+feet--no long hours of reading aloud, such as poor Miss Burney had to
+endure, in the time of old Queen Charlotte. Lady Bloomfield--then
+Georgiana Ravensworth--had little to do but to hand the Queen her bouquet
+at dinner--to ride out with her and sing with her.
+
+In the summer of 1843, the Queen and Prince made their first visit to the
+King and Queen of France, at the Chateau d'Eu, near Treport, on the
+coast. The King and several of his sons came off in the royal barge to
+meet their yacht, which they boarded. One account says that Louis
+Philippe, most unceremonious of monarchs, caught up the little Queen,
+kissed her on both cheeks, and carried her bodily on to his barge.
+
+Two Queens--Marie Amélie of France and her daughter, Louise of Belgium,
+and two of her daughters-in-law--were at the landing to receive the first
+Sovereign of England who had ever come to their shores on a friendly,
+neighborly visit. It was a visit "of unmixed pleasure," says the Queen,
+and the account of it is very pleasant reading now; but I have not space
+to reproduce it. One little passage, in reference to the widowed Duchesse
+d'Orleans, strikes my eye at this moment: "At ten, dear Hélène came to me
+with little Paris, and stayed till the King and Queen came to fetch us to
+breakfast."
+
+"Little Paris" is the present Bourbon-Orleanist bugbear of the French
+Republic--a very tame and well-behaved _bête noir_, but distrusted
+and dreaded all the same.
+
+After this French visit, the Queen and Prince went over to see their
+uncle and aunt, at Brussels, and had a very interesting tour through
+Belgium. Prince Albert, writing to the Baron soon after, said: "We found
+uncle and aunt well. ... The children are blooming. Little Charlotte is
+quite the prettiest child you ever saw." This "little Charlotte"
+afterwards married Maximilian of Austria, the imperial puppet of Louis
+Napoleon in Mexico. So Charlotte was for a brief, stormy time an Empress
+--then came misfortune and madness. She is living yet, in that world of
+shadows so much sadder than "the valley of the shadow of death."
+
+In the spring of this year, the Duke of Sussex died, and at the next
+prorogation of Parliament I read that the Queen, no longer fearing to
+wound the susceptibilities of her proud old uncle, said to her husband,
+"Come up higher!"--and had a chair for him, precisely like her own, on a
+level with her own. It was on her left. The smaller chair, on her right,
+belonged to "little Bertie," who was not yet quite ready to occupy it.
+
+In the autumn, came a visit to the University of Cambridge, where the
+Queen had the delight of seeing the degree of LL.D. conferred on her
+husband. So he mounted, step by step, into the honorable position which
+belonged to him. In this year also, he won laurels which he cared little
+for, but which counted much for him among a class of Englishmen who
+lightly esteemed his literary, artistic, and scientific taste and
+knowledge. In a great hunting-party he carried off the honors by his
+fearless and admirable riding. Sporting men said: "Why, there really is
+something in the man beside good looks and German music and metaphysics.
+He can take hedges and ditches as well as degrees."
+
+I do not think Prince Albert did justice to the English people, when,
+after his father's death, in the following year, he wrote in the first
+gush of his grief, to the Baron: "Here we sit together, poor Mama,
+Victoria and I, and weep, with a great, cold public around us, insensible
+as stone."
+
+I cannot believe that the British public is ever insensible to royal
+sorrow.
+
+The Prince-Consort went over to Coburg on a visit of condolence. Some
+passages in his letters to the Queen, who took this first separation from
+him hard, are nice reading for their homely and husbandly spirit. From
+the yacht, before sailing, he wrote: "I have been here an hour, and
+regret the lost time which I might have spent with you. Poor child! you
+will, while I write, be getting ready for luncheon, and you will find a
+place vacant where I sat yesterday. In your heart, however, I hope my
+place will not be vacant. I at least, have you on board with me in
+spirit. I reiterate my entreaty, 'Bear up! and don't give way to low
+spirits, but try to occupy yourself as much as possible.'" ... "I have
+got toys for the children, and porcelain views for you." ... "Oh! how
+lovely and friendly is this dear old country. How glad I should be to
+have my little wife beside me, to share my pleasure."
+
+Miss Mitford, speaking of a desire expressed by the Queen, to see that
+quaint old place, Strawberry Hill and all its curiosities, says: "Nothing
+can tend more to ensure popularity than that Her Majesty should partake
+of the national amusements and the natural curiosity of the more
+cultivated portion of her subjects."
+
+In such directions, certainly, the Queen was never found wanting in those
+days. In "natural curiosity" she was a veritable daughter of Eve, and
+granddaughter of George the Third. She was interested not only in the
+scientific discoveries, new mechanical inventions, and agricultural
+improvements which so interested her husband, but in odd varieties of
+animals and human creatures. She accepted with pleasure the gift of a
+Liliputian horse, supposed to be the smallest in the world--over five
+years old, and only twenty-seven and a half inches high--brought from
+Java, by a sea-captain, who used to take the gallant steed under his arm,
+and run down-stairs with him; and she very graciously received and was
+immensely entertained with the distinguished young American, who should
+have been the Alexander of that Bucephalus--General Tom Thumb. This
+little _lusus naturæ_, under the masterly management of Mr. Barnum,
+had made a great sensation in London--which, after the Queen had summoned
+him two or three times to Windsor, grew into a fashionable furor. Mr.
+Barnum's description of those visits to the royal palaces is very
+amusing. They were first received in the grand picture-gallery by the
+Queen, the Duchess of Kent, Prince Albert, and the usual Court ladies and
+gentlemen. Mr. Barnum writes: "They were standing at the farther end of
+the room when the doors were thrown open, and the General walked in,
+looking like a wax-doll gifted with the powers of locomotion. Surprise
+and pleasure were depicted on the faces of the royal circle, at beholding
+this remarkable specimen of humanity, so much smaller than they had
+evidently expected to see him. The General advanced with a firm step, and
+as he came within hailing distance, made a graceful bow, and said, 'Good-
+evening, ladies and gentlemen!'
+
+"A burst of laughter followed this salutation. The Queen then took him by
+the hand, and led him about the gallery, and asked him many questions,
+the answers to which kept the party in continual merriment. The General
+informed the Queen, that her picture-gallery was 'first-rate,' and said
+he should like to see the Prince of Wales. The Queen replied that the
+Prince had gone to bed, but that he should see him on a future occasion."
+The General then gave his songs, dances, and imitations; and after an
+hour's talk with Prince Albert and the rest, departed as coolly as he had
+come, but not as leisurely, as the long backing-out process being too
+tedious, he varied it with little runs, which drew from the Queen,
+Prince, and Court peels of laughter, and roused the ire of the Queen's
+poodle, who attacked the small Yankee stranger. The General defended
+himself with his little cane, as valiantly as the original Tom Thumb with
+his mother's darning-needle. On the next visit, he was introduced to the
+Prince of Wales, whom he addressed with a startling, "How are you,
+Prince?" He then received a costly souvenir from the Queen, and, each
+time he performed, generous pay in gold. The Queen Dowager was also much
+taken with him, and presented him with a beautiful little watch. She
+called him "dear little General," and took him on her lap. The time came
+(when this "full-grown" dwarf was fuller-grown) that the most powerful
+Queen Dowager would have found it difficult to dandle him, Charles
+Stratton, Esq., a husband and father, on her knee: The fact is the
+General was a bit of a humbug, being considerably younger than he was
+given out to be. But he was an exceedingly pretty, amusing little humbug,
+so it was no matter then. But when the truth came out, the Queen's faith
+in Yankee showmen must have suffered a shock, as must that of the honest
+old Duke of Wellington, who used to drop in at Egyptian Hall so often to
+see the tiny creature assume the dress and the pensive pose of Napoleon
+"thinking of the loss of the battle of Waterloo," and looking so like his
+old enemy, seen through a reversed field-glass. Very likely the Queen's
+"full-grown" Java horse turned out to be a young colt.
+
+After the dwarf, came the giant--the tallest and grandest of the
+sovereigns of Europe, Nicholas, the Emperor of all the Russias. He came
+on one of his war-ships, but with the friendliest feelings, and "just
+dropped in" on the Queen, with only a few hours' notice. It was a
+pleasant little way he had of surprising his friends. However, he was
+made welcome, and everything possible was done to entertain and do him
+honor during his stay. He had visited England before, when he was much
+younger and handsomer. Baron Stockmar met him at Claremont, in the time
+of the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold, and quotes a compliment
+paid him by a Court lady, in the refined language of the Regency: "What
+an amiable creature! He is devilish handsome! He will be the handsomest
+man in Europe." And so he might have been, had he possessed a heart and
+soul. But his expression was always, if not actually bad, severe and
+repellant. The look his large, keen eyes, which had very pale lashes, and
+every now and then showed the white all round the iris, is said to have
+been quite awful. He was a soldier above all things, and told the Queen
+he felt very awkward in evening-dress, as though in leaving off his
+uniform he had "taken off his skin." He must have been rather a
+discommoding guest, from a little whim he had of sleeping only on straw.
+He always had with him a leathern case, which at every place he stopped,
+was filled with fresh straw from the stables.
+
+He was an excessively polite man--this towering Czar; but for all that, a
+very cruel man--a colossal embodiment of the autocratic principle--
+selfish and cold and hard--though he did win upon the Queen's heart by
+praise of her husband. He said: "Nowhere will you find a handsomer young
+man; he has such an air of nobility and goodness." It was a mystery how
+he could so well appreciate that pure and lovable character, for the
+Prince Consort must always have been a mystery to men like the Czar
+Nicholas.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Old homes and new--A visit from the King of France--The Queen and Prince
+Albert make their first visit to Germany--Incidents of the trip--A new
+seaside home on the Isle of Wight--Repeal of the Corn Laws--Prince Albert
+elected Chancellor of Cambridge University--Benjamin Disraeli.
+
+
+This year--1844--there was a death in the household at Windsor, and a
+birth. The death was that of Eos, the favorite greyhound of Prince
+Albert. "Dear Eos," as the Queen called her, was found dead one morning.
+The Prince wrote the next day to his grandmother, "You will share my
+sorrow at this loss. She was a singularly clever creature and had been
+for eleven years faithfully devoted to me. How many recollections are
+linked with her."
+
+This beautiful and graceful animal, almost human in her love, and in
+something very like intellect and soul, appears in several of Landseer's
+pictures. I will not apologize for keeping a Royal Prince waiting while I
+give this space to her. This Prince, born at Windsor, in August, was the
+present Duke of Edinburgh. He was christened Alfred Ernest Albert. The
+Queen in her journal wrote: "The scene in the chapel was very solemn. ...
+To see those two children there too" (the Princess Royal and the Prince
+of Wales), "seemed such a dream to me. May God bless them all, poor
+little things!" Her Majesty adds that all through the service she
+fervently prayed that this boy might be "as good as his beloved father."
+How is it, your Royal Highness?
+
+This year they went again to the Highlands for a few weeks. The Queen's
+journal says: "Mama came to take leave of us. Alice and the baby were
+brought in, poor little things! to bid us good-bye. Then good Bertie came
+down to see us, and Vicky appeared as _voyageuse_, and was all
+impatience to go."
+
+"Bertie" is the family name for the Prince of Wales. I believe that at
+heart he is still "good Bertie." "Vicky" was the Princess Royal. The
+Queen further on remarks: "I said to Albert I could hardly believe that
+our child was traveling with us; it put me so in mind of myself when I
+was the little Princess.'"
+
+This year Louis Philippe came over to return the visit of the Queen and
+the Prince, and there were great festivities and investings at Windsor
+with all possible kindness and courtesy, and I hope the wily old King
+went home with gratitude in his heart, as well as the garter on his leg.
+This year too the Queen and Prince made their first visit to Germany
+together. The picture the Queen paints of the morning of leaving and the
+parting from the children is very domestic, sweet, and motherly: "Both
+Vicky and darling Alice were with me while I dressed. Poor dear Puss
+wished much to go with us and often said, 'Why am I not going to
+Germany?' Most willingly would I have taken her. I wished much to take
+one of dearest Albert's children with us to Coburg; but the journey is a
+serious undertaking and she is very young still." ... "It was a painful
+moment to drive away with the three poor little things standing at the
+door. God bless them and protect them--which He will."
+
+The English Queen and the Prince-Consort were received with all possible
+royal honors and popular respect at Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne, and at
+the Royal Palace at Brühl. It was past midnight when they reached that
+welcome resting-place, and yet, as an account before me states, they were
+regaled by a military serenade "in which seven hundred performers were
+engaged!" A German friend of ours from that region supplements this story
+by stating that five hundred of those military performers were drummers;
+that they were accompanied by torch-bearers; that they came under the
+Queen's windows, wakened her out of her first sleep, and almost drove her
+wild with fright. With those tremendous trumpetings and drum-beatings,
+"making night hideous" with their storm of menacing, barbaric sound, and
+with the fierce glare of the torchlight, it might have seemed to her that
+Doomsday had burst on the world, and that the savage old Huns of Attila
+were up first, ready for war.
+
+The next day they all went up the Rhine to the King's Palace of
+Stolzenfels. Never perhaps was even a Rhine steamer so heavily freighted
+with royalty--a cargo of Kings and Queens, Princes and Archdukes. It was
+all very fine, as were the royal feasts and festivals, but the Queen and
+Prince were happiest when they had left all this grandeur and parade
+behind them and were at Coburg amid their own kin--for there, impatiently
+awaiting them, were the mother of Victoria and the brother of Albert, and
+"a staircase full of cousins," as the Queen says. They stopped at lovely
+Rosenau, and the Queen, with one of her beautiful poetic impulses, chose
+for their chamber the room in which her husband was born. She wrote in
+her journal, "How happy, how joyful we were, on awaking, to find
+ourselves here, at the dear Rosenau, my Albert's birth-place, the place
+he most loves. ... He was so happy to be here with me. It was like a
+beautiful dream."
+
+The account of the rejoicings of the simple Coburg people, and especially
+of the children, over their beloved Prince, and over the visit of his
+august wife, is really very touching. Their offerings and tributes were
+mostly flowers, poems and music--wonderfully sweet chorales and gay
+_réveils_ and inspiriting marches. There was a great _fête_ of
+the peasants on Prince Albert's birthday, with much waltzing, and
+shouting, and beer-quaffing, and toast-giving. The whole visit was an
+Arcadian episode, simple and charming, in the grand royal progress of
+Victoria's life. But the royal progress had to be resumed--the State
+called back its bond-servants; and so, after a visit to the dear old
+grandmother at Gotha--the parting with whom seemed especially hard to
+Prince Albert, as though he had a presentiment it was to be the last--
+they set out for home. They took their yacht at Antwerp, and after a
+flying visit to the King and Queen of France at Eu, were soon at Osborne,
+where their family were awaiting them. The Queen wrote: "The dearest of
+welcomes greeted us as we drove up straight to the house, for there,
+looking like roses, so well and so fat, stood the four children, much
+pleased to see us!"
+
+Ah, often the best part of going away is coming home.
+
+During this year the Royal Family were very happy in taking possession of
+their new seaside palace on the Isle of Wight, and I believe paid no more
+visits to Brighton, which was so much crowded in the season as to make
+anything like the privacy they desired impossible. During her last stay
+at the Pavilion the Queen was so much displeased at the rudeness of the
+people who pressed about her and Prince Albert, when they were trying to
+have a quiet little walk on the breezy pier, that I read she appealed to
+the magistrates for protection. There was such a large and ever-growing
+crowd of excited, hurrying, murmuring, staring Brightonians and strangers
+about them that it seemed a rallying cry had gone through the town, from
+lip to lip: "The Queen and Prince are out! To the pier! To the pier!"
+
+The Pavilion was never a desirable Marine Palace, as it commanded no good
+views of the sea; so Her Majesty's new home in the Isle of Wight had for
+her, the Prince and the children every advantage over the one in Brighton
+except in bracing sea-air. Osborne has a broad sea view, a charming
+beach, to which the woods run down--the lovely woods in which are found
+the first violets of the spring and to which the nightingales first come.
+The grounds were fine and extensive, to the great delight of the Prince
+Consort, who had not only a peculiar passion, but a peculiar talent for
+gardening. Indeed, when this many-sided German was born a Prince, a
+masterly landscape-gardener was lost to the world--that is, the world
+outside the grounds of Windsor, Osborne and Balmoral, which indeed "keep
+his memory green." The Queen writing from Osborne says: "Albert is so
+happy here--out all day planting, directing, etc., and it is so good for
+him. It is a relief to get away from the bitterness which people create
+for themselves in London."--But I am not writing the Life of Prince
+Albert;--I often forget that.
+
+The year of 1846 was gloriously marked by the repeal of the Corn Laws; a
+measure of justice and mercy, the withholding of which from the people
+had for several years produced much distress and commotion. Some
+destructive work had been done by mobs on the houses of the supporters of
+the old laws; they had even stoned the town residence of the Duke of
+Wellington, Apsley House. The stern old fighter would have been glad at
+the moment to have swept the streets clear with cannon, but he contented
+himself with putting shutters over his broken windows, to hide the shame.
+I believe they were never opened again while he lived. The great leaders
+in this Corn Laws agitation were Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright. These great-
+hearted men could not rest for the cries which came up to them from the
+suffering people. There were sore privations and "short commons" in
+England, and in Ireland, starvation, real, honest, earnest starvation.
+The poverty of the land had struck down into the great Irish stand-by,
+the potato, a deadly blight. A year or two later the evil took gigantic
+proportions; the news came to us in America, and an alarm was sounded
+which roused the land. We sent a divine Armada against the grim enemy
+which was wasting the Green Isle; ships, which poured into him broadsides
+of big bread-balls, and grape-shot of corn, beans and potatoes. It is
+recorded that "in one Irish seaport town the bells were kept ringing all
+day in honor of the arrival of one of these grain-laden vessels." I am
+afraid these bells had a sweeter sound to the poor people than even those
+rung on royal birthdays.
+
+Strangely enough, after the passage of measures which immortalized his
+ministerial term, Sir Robert Peel was ejected from power. The Queen
+parted from him with great regret, but quietly accepted his successor,
+Lord John Russell.
+
+Six years had now gone by since the marriage of Victoria and Albert, and
+the family had grown to be six, and soon it was seven, for in May the
+Princess Helena Augusta Victoria was born. Her godmother was Hélène, the
+widowed Duchess of Orleans, the mother of the gallant young men, the
+Count de Paris and the Duke de Chartres, who during our great war came
+over to America to see service under General McClellan.
+
+About this time the Prince-Consort was called to Liverpool to open a
+magnificent dock named after him, which duty he performed in the most
+graceful manner. The next day he laid the foundation-stone for a Sailors'
+Home. The Queen, who was not able to be with him on these occasions,
+wrote to the Baron: "I feel very lonely without my dear master, and
+though I know other people are often separated, I feel that I could never
+get accustomed to it. ... Without him everything loses its interest. It
+will always cause a terrible pang for me to be separated from him even
+for two days, and I pray God not to let me survive him. I glory in his
+being seen and loved."
+
+In September they went into the new Marine Palace at Osborne. On the
+first evening, amid the gaieties of the splendid house-warming festival,
+the Prince very solemnly repeated a hymn of Luther's, sung in Germany on
+these occasions. Translated it is:
+
+  "God bless our going out, nor less
+  Our coming in, and make them sure;
+  God bless our daily bread, and bless
+  Whate'er we do--whate'er endure;
+  In death unto His peace awake us,
+  And heirs of His salvation make us."
+
+They were very happy amid all the political trouble and perplexity--
+almost too happy, considering how life was going on, or going off in poor
+Ireland. Doubtless the cries of starving children and the moans of fever-
+stricken mothers must often have pierced the tender hearts of the Queen
+and Prince; but the calamity was so vast, so apparently irremediable,
+that they turned their thoughts away from it as much as possible, as we
+turn ours from the awful tragic work of volcanoes in the far East and
+tornadoes in the West. It was a sort of charmed life they lived, with its
+pastoral peace and simple pleasures. Lady Bloomfield wrote: "It always
+entertains me to see the little things which amuse Her Majesty and the
+Prince, instead of their looking bored, as people so often do in English
+society." One thing, however, did "bore" him, and that, unfortunately,
+was riding--"for its own sake." So it was not surprising that after a
+time the Queen indulged less in her favourite pastime. She still loved a
+romping dance now and then, but she was hardly as gay as when Guizot
+first saw and described her. Writing from Windsor to his son he gives a
+picture of a royal dinner party: "On my left sat the young Queen whom
+they tried to assassinate the other day, in gay spirits, talking a great
+deal, laughing very often and longing to laugh still more; and filling
+with her gaiety, which contrasted with the already tragical elements of
+her history, this ancient castle which has witnessed the career of all
+her predecessors."
+
+The political affairs which tried and troubled the Queen and the Prince
+were not merely English. They were much disturbed and shocked by the
+unworthy intrigues and the unkingly bad faith shown by Louis Philippe in
+the affair of the "Spanish Marriages"--a complicated and rather delicate
+matter, which I have neither space nor desire to dwell upon here. It had
+a disastrous effect on the Orleans family, and perhaps on the history of
+France. It has been mostly interesting to me now for the manner in which
+the subject was, handled by the Queen, whose letters revealed a royal
+high spirit and a keen sense of royal honor. She regretted the heartless
+State marriage of the young Queen of Spain, not only from a political but
+a domestic point of view. She saw poor Isabella forced or tricked into a
+distasteful union, from which unhappiness must, and something far worse
+than unhappiness might, come. Many and great misfortunes did come of it
+and to the actors in it.
+
+In the spring of 1847 the Prince-Consort was elected Chancellor of the
+University of Cambridge--a great honor for so young a man. The Queen was
+present at the installation, and there was a splendid time. Wordsworth
+wrote an ode on the occasion. It was not quite equal to his "Ode on the
+Intimations of Immortality." In truth, Mr. Wordsworth did not shine as
+Poet Laureate. Mr. Tennyson better earns his butt of Malmsey.
+
+Seated on the throne in the great Hall of Trinity, the Queen received the
+new Chancellor, who was beautifully dressed in robes of black and gold,
+with a long train borne by two of his officers. He read to her a speech,
+to which she read a reply, saying that on the whole she approved of the
+choice of the University. "I cannot say," writes the Queen, "how it
+agitated and embarrassed me to have, to receive this address, and hear it
+read by my beloved Albert, who walked in at the head of the University,
+and who looked dear and beautiful in his robes."
+
+Happy woman! When ordinary husbands make long, grave speeches to their
+wives, they do not often look "dear and beautiful!"
+
+This year a new prima-donna took London by storm and gave the Queen and
+Prince "exquisite enjoyment." Her Majesty wrote: "Her acting alone is
+worth going to see, and the _piano_ way she has of singing, Lablache
+says, is unlike anything he ever heard. He is quite enchanted. There is a
+purity in her singing and acting which is quite indescribable."
+
+That singer was Jenny Lind.
+
+About this time lovers of impassioned oratory felt the joy which the
+astronomer knows "_when a new comet swims into his ken_" in the
+appearance of a brilliant political orator, of masterly talent and more
+masterly will. This still young man of Hebraic origin, rather dashing and
+flashing in manner and dress, had not been thought to have any very
+serious purpose in life, and does not seem to have much impressed the
+Queen or Prince Albert at first; but the time came when he, as a Minister
+and friend, occupied a place in Her Majesty's respect and regard scarcely
+second to the one once occupied by Lord Melbourne. This orator was
+Benjamin Disraeli.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+A Troublous Time--Louis Philippe an Exile--The Purchase of Balmoral--A
+Letter of Prince Albert's--Another attempt on the Queen's Life--The
+Queen's instructions to the Governess of her Daughters--A visit to
+Ireland--Death of Dowager Queen Adelaide.
+
+
+At last came 1848--a year packed with political convulsions and
+overthrows. The spirit of revolution was rampant, bowling away at all the
+thrones of Europe. England heard the storm thundering nearly all round
+the horizon, for in the sister isle the intermittent rebellion broke out,
+chiefly among the "Young Ireland" party, led by Mitchel, Meagher and
+O'Brien. This plucky little uprising was soon put down. The leaders were
+brave, eloquent, ardent young men, but their followers were not disposed
+to fight long and well--perhaps their stomachs were too empty. The
+Chartists stirred again, and renewed their not unreasonable or
+treasonable demands; but all in vain. There is really something awful
+about the strength and solidity and impassivity of England. When the
+French monarchy went down in the earthquake shock of that wild winter,
+and a republic came up in its place, it surely would have been no wonder
+if a vast tidal-wave of revolution caused by so much subsidence and
+upheaving had broken disastrously on the English shores. But it did not.
+The old sea-wall of loyalty and constitutional liberty was too strong.
+There were only floated up a few waifs, and among them a "_forlorn and
+shipwrecked brother_," calling himself "John Smith," and a poor, gray-
+haired, heart-broken woman, "Mrs. Smith," for the nonce. When these came
+to land they were recognized as Louis Philippe and Marie Amélie of
+France. Afterwards most of their family, who had been scattered by the
+tempest, came also, and joined them in a long exile. The English asylum
+of the King and Queen was Claremont, that sanctuary of love and sorrow,
+which the Queen, though loving it well, had at once given over to her
+unfortunate old friends, whom she received with the most sympathetic
+kindness, trying to forget all causes of ill-feeling given her a year or
+two before by the scheming King and his ambitious sons.
+
+In the midst of the excitement and anxiety of that time, a gentle,
+loving, world-wearied soul passed out of our little mortal day at Gotha,
+and a fresh, bright young soul came into it in London. The dear old
+grandmother of the Prince died, in her palace of Friedrichsthal, and his
+daughter, Louise Caroline Alberta, now Marchioness of Lorne, was born in
+Buckingham Palace.
+
+Among those ruined by the convulsions in Germany were the Queen's
+brother, Prince Leiningen, and her brother-in-law, Prince Hohenlohe. So
+the thunderbolt had struck near. At one time it threatened to strike
+still nearer, for that spring the Chartists made their great
+demonstration, or rather announced one. It was expected that they would
+assemble at a given point and march, several hundred thousand strong, on
+Parliament, bearing a monster petition. What such a mighty body of men
+might do, what excesses they might commit in the capital, nobody could
+tell. The Queen was packed off to Osborne with baby Louise, to be out of
+harm's way, and 170,000 men enrolled themselves as special constables.
+Among these was Louis Napoleon, longing for a fight of some sort in
+alliance with England. He did net get it till some years after. There was
+no collision, in fact no large compact procession; the Chartists, mostly
+very good citizens, quietly dispersed and went home after presenting
+their petition. The great scare was over, but the special constables were
+as proud as Wellington's army after Waterloo.
+
+When the Chartist leaders had been tried for sedition and sentenced to
+terms of imprisonment, and the Irish leaders had been transported, things
+looked so flat in England that the young French Prince turned again to
+France to try his fortune. It was his third trial. The first two efforts
+under Louis Philippe to stir up a revolt and topple the citizen king from
+the throne had ended in imprisonment and ridicule; but now he would not
+seem to play a Napoleonic game. He would fall in with republican ideas
+and run for the Presidency, which he did, and won. But as the countryman
+at the circus, after creating much merriment by his awkward riding in his
+rural costume, sometimes throws it off and appears as a spangled hero and
+the very prince of equestrians; so this "nephew of his uncle," suddenly
+emerging from the disguise of a republican President, blazed forth a
+full-panoplied warrior-Emperor. But this was not yet.
+
+In September of this year the Queen and Prince first visited a new
+property they had purchased in the heart of the Highlands. The Prince
+wrote of it: "We have withdrawn for a short time into a complete mountain
+solitude, where one rarely sees a human face, where the snow already
+covers the mountain-tops and the wild deer come creeping stealthily round
+the house. I, naughty man, have also been creeping stealthily after the
+harmless stags, and today I shot two red deer." ... "The castle is of
+granite, with numerous small turrets, and is situated on a rising-ground,
+surrounded by birchwood, and close to the river Dee. The air is glorious
+and dear, but icy cold."
+
+What a relief it must have been to them to feel themselves out of the
+reach of runaway royalties, and "surprise parties" of Emperors and Grand
+Dukes.
+
+In March, 1849, the Prince laid the foundation-stone for the Great
+Grimsby Docks, and made a noble speech on the occasion. From that I will
+not quote, but I am tempted to give entire a charming note which he wrote
+from Brocklesby, Lord Yarborough's place, to the Queen.
+
+It runs thus:
+
+"Your faithful husband, agreeably to your wishes, reports: 1. That he is
+still alive. 2. That he has discovered the North Pole from Lincoln
+Cathedral, but without finding either Captain Ross or Sir John Franklin.
+3. That he arrived at Brocklesby and received the address. 4. That he
+subsequently rode out and got home quite covered with snow and with
+icicles on his nose. 5. That the messenger is waiting to carry off this
+letter, which you will have in Windsor by the morning. 6. Last, but not
+least, that he loves his wife and remains her devoted husband."
+
+We may believe the good, fun-loving wife was delighted with this little
+letter, and read it to a few of her choicest friends.
+
+A few months later, while the Queen was driving with her children in an
+open carriage over that assassin-haunted Constitution Hill, she was fired
+at by a mad Irishman--William Hamilton. She did not lose for a moment her
+wonderful self-possession, but ordered the carriage to move on, and
+quieted with a few calm words the terror of the children.
+
+We have seen that at the time of Oxford's attempt she "laughed at the
+thing"; but now there had been so many shootings that "the thing" was
+getting tiresome and monotonous, and she did not interfere with the
+carrying out of the sentence of seven years' transportation. This was not
+the last. In 1872 a Fenian tried his hand against his widowed sovereign,
+and we all know of the shocking attempt of two years ago at Windsor. In
+truth, Her Majesty has been the greatest royal target in Europe.
+_Messieurs les assassins_ are not very gallant.
+
+All this time the Prince-Consort was up to his elbows in work of many
+kinds. That which he loved best, planning and planting the grounds of
+Osborne and Balmoral and superintending building, he cheerfully
+sacrificed for works of public utility. He inaugurated and urged forward
+many benevolent and scientific enterprises, and schools of art and music.
+This extraordinary man seemed to have a prophetic sense of the value and
+ultimate success of inchoate public improvements, and when he once
+adopted a scheme allowed nothing to discourage him. He engineered the
+Holborn Viaduct enterprise, and I notice that at a late meeting of the
+brave Channel Tunnel Company, Sir E. W. Watkin claimed that "the cause
+had once the advocacy of the great Prince-Consort, the most sagacious man
+of the century."
+
+With all these things he found time to carefully overlook the education
+of his children. The Prince of Wales was now thought old enough to be
+placed under a tutor, and one was selected--a Mr. Birch (let us hope the
+name was not significant), "a young, good-looking, amiable man," who had
+himself taken "the highest honors at Cambridge";--doubtless a great point
+those highest Cambridge honors, for the instructor of an eight-years-old
+boy. For all the ability and learning of his tutor, it is said that the
+Prince of Wales never took to the classics with desperate avidity. He was
+never inclined to waste his strength or dim his pleasant blue eyes over
+the midnight oil.
+
+Prince Albert never gave the training of his boys up wholly to the most
+accomplished instructors. His was still, while he lived, the guiding,
+guarding spirit. The Queen was equally faithful in the discharge of her
+duties to her children--especially to her daughters. In her memoranda I
+find many admirable passages which reveal her peculiarly simple,
+domestic, affectionate system of home government. The religious training
+of her little ones she kept as much as possible in her own hands, still
+the cares of State and the duties of royal hospitality would interfere,
+and, writing of the Princess Royal, in 1844, she says: "It is a hard case
+for me that my occupations prevent me from being with her when she says
+her prayers."
+
+Some instructions which she gave to this child's governess should be
+printed in letters of gold:
+
+"I am quite clear that she should be taught to have great reverence for
+God and for religion, but that she should have the feeling of devotion
+and love which our heavenly Father encourages His earthly children to
+have for Him, and not one of fear and trembling; and that thoughts of
+death and an after life should not be represented in an alarming and
+forbidding view; and that she should be made to know as yet no difference
+of creeds, and not think that she can only pray on her knees, or that
+those who do not kneel are less fervent or devout in their prayers."
+
+In August of this year the Queen and Prince sailed in their favorite
+yacht, the _Victoria and Albert_, for Ireland, taking with them
+their three eldest children, the better to show the Irish people that
+their sovereign had not lost confidence in them for their recent bit of a
+rebellion, which she believed was one-half Popery and the other half
+potato-rot. The Irish people justified that faith. At the Cove of Cork,
+where the Royal party first landed, and which has been Queenstown ever
+since, their reception was most enthusiastic, as it was also in Dublin,
+so lately disaffected. The common people were especially delighted with
+the children, and one "stout old woman" shouted out, "Oh, Queen, dear,
+make one o' thim darlints Patrick, and all Ireland will die for ye!" They
+afterwards got their "Patrick" in the little Duke of Connaught, but I
+fear were none the more disposed to die for the English Queen. Perhaps he
+came a little too late.
+
+The Queen on this trip expressed the intention of creating the Prince of
+Wales Earl of Dublin, by way of compliment and conciliation, and perhaps
+she did, but still Fenianism grew and flourished In Ireland.
+
+The passage from Belfast to Loch Ryan was very rough--a regular rebellion
+against, "the Queen of the Seas," as the Emperor of France afterwards
+called Victoria. She records that, "Poor little Affie was knocked down
+and sent rolling over the deck, and was completely drenched." The poor
+little fellow, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the bold mariner of the
+family, probably cried out then that he would "never, never be a sailor."
+
+In a letter from Balmoral, written on his thirtieth birthday, the Prince-
+Consort says: "Victoria is happy and cheerful--the children are well and
+grow apace; the Highlands are glorious."
+
+I do not know that the fact has anything to do with Her Majesty's
+peculiar love for Scotland, but she came very near being born in that
+part of her dominions--the Duke of Kent having proposed a little while
+before her birth to take a place in Lanarkshire, belonging to a friend.
+Had he done so his little daughter would have been a Highland lassie. I
+don't think the Queen would have objected. She said to Sir Archibald
+Alison, "I am more proud of my Scotch descent than of any other. When I
+first came into Scotland I felt as if I were coming home."
+
+With the occupation of Balmoral this home feeling increased: The Queen
+was ever impatient to seek that mountain retreat and regretful to leave
+it. She loved above all the outdoor life there--the rough mountaineering,
+the deer hunts, the climbing, the following up and fording streams, the
+picnics on breezy hill-sides; she loved to get out from under the dark
+purple shadow of royalty and nestle down among the brighter purple of the
+heather; she loved to go off on wild incognito expeditions and be
+addressed by the simple peasants without her awesome titles; even loved
+to be at times like the peasants in simplicity and naturalness, to feel
+with her "guid mon," like a younger Mistress Anderson with her "jo John."
+She seemed to enjoy all weathers at Balmoral. I am told that she used to
+delight in walking in the rain and wind and going out protected only by a
+thick water-proof, the hood drawn over her head; and that she liked
+nothing better than driving in a heavy snow-storm. After the return from
+Scotland, the Queen was to have opened the new Coal Exchange in London,
+but was prevented by an odd and much-belated ailment, an attack of
+chicken-pox. Prince Albert went in her place and took the Princess Royal
+and the Prince of Wales, who, Lady Lyttelton writes: "behaved very
+civilly and nicely." There was an immense crowd, all shouting and
+cheering, and smiling kindly on the children. Some official of immense
+size, with a big cloak and wig, and a big voice, is described as making a
+pompous speech to little Albert Edward, looking down on him and
+addressing him as "Your Royal Highness, the pledge, and promise of a long
+race of Kings." Lady Lyttelton adds: "Poor Princey did not seem to guess
+at all what he meant."
+
+Soon after this grand affair, a very _grand personage_ came not
+unwillingly to the end of all earthly affairs. Adelaide, Dowager Queen of
+England, died after a long and painful illness. She had lived a good
+life; she was a sweet, charitable, patient, lovable woman. The Queen and
+Prince-Consort were deeply grieved. The Queen wrote: "She was truly
+motherly in her kindness to us and our children. ... Poor mama is very
+much cut up by this sad event. To her the Queen is a great and serious
+loss."
+
+Queen Adelaide left directions that her funeral should be as private as
+possible, and that her coffin should be carried by sailors--a tribute to
+the memory of the Sailor-King.
+
+From an English gentleman, who has exceptional opportunities of knowing
+much of the private history of Royalty, I have received an anecdote of
+this good woman and wife, when Duchess of Clarence--something which our
+friend thinks does her more honor than afterwards did her title of Queen.
+When she was married she knew, for everybody knew, of the left-hand
+marriage of the Duke with the beautiful actress, Mrs. Jordan, from whom
+he was then separated. The Duke took his bride to Bushey Park, his
+residence, for the honeymoon, and himself politely conducted her to her
+chamber. She looked about the elegant room well pleased, but was soon
+struck by the picture of a very lovely woman, over the mantel. "Who is
+that?" she asked. The poor Duke was aghast, but he had at least the
+kingly quality of truth-telling, and stammered out: "That, my dear
+Adelaide, is a portrait of Mrs. Jordan. I humbly beg your pardon for its
+being here. I gave orders to have it removed, but those stupid servants
+have neglected to do it. I will have it done at once--only forgive me."
+
+The Duchess took her husband's hand and said: "No, my dear William, you
+must not do it! I know what Mrs. Jordan has been to you in the past--that
+you have loved her--that she is the mother of your children, and I wish
+her portrait to remain where it is." And it did remain. This was very
+noble and generous, certainly; but I cannot help thinking that the
+Duchess was not very much in love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+The Great Exhibition--Birth of the Duke of Connaught--Death of Sir Robert
+Peel and Louis Philippe--Prince Albert's speech before the Society for
+the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.
+
+
+Early in this year of 1850, Prince Albert, though not in his usual
+health, began in deadly earnest on his colossal labors in behalf of the
+great "World's Exhibition." England owed that magnificent manifestation
+of her resources and her enterprise far more to him than to any other
+man. He met with much opposition from that conservative class who, from
+the start, denounce all new ideas and innovations, shrinking like owls
+from the advancing day; and that timid class who, while admitting the
+grandeur of the idea, feared it was premature. "The time has not come,"
+they said; "wait a century or two." Some opposed it on the ground that it
+would bring to London a host of foreigners, with foreign ideas and
+perilous to English morals and religion.
+
+In the garden of a certain grand English country-place there is a certain
+summer-house with a closed door, which, if a curious visitor opens, lets
+off some water-works, which give him a spray-douche. So the Prince
+received, at door after door, a dash of cold water for his "foreign
+enterprise." But he persevered, letting nothing dishearten him--toiling
+terribly, and inspiring others to toil, till at last the site he desired
+for the building was granted him, and the first Crystal Palace--the first
+palace for the people in England--went slowly up, amid the sun-dropped
+shades of Hyde Park. Temporary as was that marvelous structure, destined
+so soon to pass away, like "the baseless fabric of a vision," I can but
+think it the grandest of the monuments to the memory of the Prince-
+Consort, though little did he so regard it. To his poetic yet practical
+mind it was the universal temple of industry and art, the valhalla of the
+heroes of commerce, the fane of the gods of science--the caravansery of
+the world. That Exhibition brought together the ends of the earth,--long-
+estranged human brethren sat down together in pleasant communion. It was
+a modern Babel, finished and furnished, and where there was almost a
+fusion, instead of, a confusion, of tongues. The "barbarous Turk" was
+there, the warlike Russ, the mercenary Swiss, the passionate Italian, the
+voluptuous Spaniard, the gallant Frenchman,--and yet foreboding English
+citizens did not find themselves compelled to go armed, or to lock up
+their plate, or their wives and daughters. In fact, this beautiful
+realized dream, this accomplished fact, quickened the pulses of commerce,
+the genius of invention, the soul and the arm of industry, the popular
+zeal for knowledge, as nothing had ever done before.
+
+To go back a little to family events:--On May 1st, 1850, Prince Albert,
+in writing to his step-mother at Coburg, told a bit of news very
+charmingly: "This morning, after rather a restless night (being Walpurgis
+night, that was very appropriate), and while the witches were careering
+on the Blocksberg, under Ernst Augustus' mild sceptre, a little boy
+glided into the light of day and has been received by the sisters with
+_jubilates_. 'Now we are just as many as the days of the week!' was
+the cry, and a bit of a struggle arose as to who was to be Sunday. of
+well-bred courtesy the honor was conceded to the new-comer. Victoria is
+well, and so is the child."
+
+This Prince was called Arthur William Patrick Albert. The first name was
+in honor of the Duke of Wellington, on whose eighty-first birthday the
+boy was born; William was for the Prince of Prussia, now Emperor of
+Germany; Patrick was for Ireland in general, and the "stout old woman" of
+Dublin in particular.
+
+This year both the Queen and the country lost a great and valued friend
+in Sir Robert Peel, who was killed by being thrown from his horse. There
+was much mourning in England among all sorts of people for this rarely
+noble, unennobled man. The title of Baronet he had. inherited; it is said
+he declined a grander title, and he certainly recorded in his will a wish
+that no one of his sons should accept a title on account of _his_
+services to the country--which was a great thing for a man to do in
+England; and after his death, his wife was so proud of bearing his name
+that she declined a peerage offered to her--which was a greater thing for
+a woman to do in England.
+
+Not long after, occurred the death of the ex-King of France, at
+Claremont. McCarthy sums up his character very tersely, thus: "The
+clever, unwise, grand, mean old man." Louis Philippe's meanness was in
+his mercenary and plotting spirit, when a rich man and a king--his grand
+qualities were his courage and cheerfulness, when in poverty and exile.
+
+The Royal Family again visited Edinburgh, and stopped for a while at
+Holyrood--that quaint old Palace of poor Mary Stuart, whose sad, sweet
+memory so pervades it, like a personal atmosphere, that it seems she has
+only gone but for a little walk, or ride, with her four Maries, and will
+soon come in, laughing and talking French, and looking passing beautiful.
+Queen Victoria had then a romantic interest in the hapless Queen of
+Scots. She said to Sir Archibald Alison, "I am glad I am descended from
+Mary; I have nothing to do with Elizabeth."
+
+From Edinburgh to dear Balmoral, from whence the Prince writes: "We try
+to strengthen our hearts amid the stillness and solemnity of the
+mountains."
+
+The Queen's heart especially needed strengthening, for she was dreading a
+blow which soon fell upon her in the death of her dearest friend, her
+aunt, the Queen of the Belgians. She mourned deeply and long for this
+lovely and gifted woman, this "angelic soul," as Baron Stockmar called
+her.
+
+On April 29, 1851, the Queen paid a private visit to the Exhibition, and
+wrote: "We remained two hours and a half, and I came back quite beaten,
+and my head bewildered from the myriads of beautiful and wonderful things
+which now quite dazzle one's eyes. Such efforts have been made, and our
+people have shown such taste in their manufactures. All owing to this
+great Exhibition, and to Albert--all to _him_!"
+
+May 1st, which was the first anniversary of little Arthur's birth, was
+the great opening-day, when Princes and people took possession of that
+mighty crystal temple, and the "Festival of Peace" began.
+
+The Queen's description in her diary is an eloquent outpouring of pride
+and joy, and gratitude. One paragraph ends with these words: "God bless
+my dearest Albert. God bless my dearest country, which has shown itself
+so great to-day! One felt so grateful to the great God, who seemed to
+pervade and bless all."
+
+Her Majesty wrote that the scene in the Park as they drove through--the
+countless carriages, the vast crowd, the soldiers, the music, the
+tumultuous, yet happy excitement everywhere, reminded her of her
+coronation day; but when she entered that great glass house, over which
+floated in the sunny air the flags of all nations, within which were the
+representatives of all nations, and when she walked up to her place in
+the centre, conducted by the wizard who had conjured up for the world
+that magic structure, and when the two stood there, with a child on
+either hand, before the motley multitude, cheering in all languages--
+then, Victoria _felt her name_, and knew she had come to her real
+coronation, as sovereign, wife, and mother.
+
+Shortly after this great day, Prince Albert distinguished himself by a
+remarkably fine speech at an immense meeting of the "Society for the
+Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts." Such shoals of foreigners
+being then in London, the Society felt that they must be casting in their
+nets. Lord John Russell wrote to congratulate the Queen, who, next to the
+heathen, was most interested in the success of this speech. Her reply was
+very characteristic. After saying that she had been quite "sure that the
+Prince would say the right thing, from her entire confidence in his tact
+and judgment," she added, "The Queen at the risk of not appearing
+sufficiently modest (and yet why should a Woman ever be modest about her
+husband's merits?) must say that she thinks Lord John will admit now that
+the Prince is possessed of very extraordinary powers of mind and heart.
+She feels so proud of being his wife, that she cannot refrain from paying
+herself a tribute to his noble character."
+
+Ah, English husbands should be loyal beyond measure to the illustrious
+lady, who has set such a matchless example of wifely faith, pride and
+devotion. But it will be a pity if in preaching up to their wives her
+example, they forget the no less admirable example of the Prince-Consort.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Close of the Great Exhibition-Anecdote--Louis Kossuth--Napoleon III.--The
+writer's first visit to England--Description of a Prorogation of
+Parliament.
+
+
+The great Exhibition was closed about the middle of October, on a dark
+and rainy day. The last ceremonies were very solemn and impressive. It
+had not remained long enough for people to be wearied of it. The Queen,
+the Prince and their children seemed never to tire of visiting it, and
+the prospect of a sight of them was one of the greatest attractions of
+the place to other visitors, especially to simple country-folk--though
+these were sometimes disappointed at not beholding the whole party
+wearing crowns and trailing royal robes.
+
+I remember a little anecdote of one of Her Majesty's visits to the
+Crystal Palace. Among the American manufactures were some fine soaps, and
+among these a small head, done in white Castile, and so exactly like
+marble that the Queen doubted the soap story, and in her impulsive,
+investigating way was about to test it with a scratch of her shawl-pin,
+when the Yankee exhibitor stayed her hand, and drew forth a courteous
+apology by the loyal remonstrance--"Pardon, your Majesty,--_it is the
+head of Washington_!"
+
+Soon after the Princes and Kings went home, there arrived in London a man
+whose heroism and eloquence had thrilled the hearts and filled the
+thoughts of the world as those of no monarch living had ever done. He was
+not received with royal honors, though with some generous enthusiasm, by
+the people. He was looked upon, in high places as that most forlorn
+being, an unsuccessful adventurer;--so he turned his face, his sad eyes
+wistful with one last hope, towards the setting sun. Alas, his own
+political sun had already set!
+
+This man was Louis Kossuth. About the same time another man, without
+heroism, without eloquence, but with almost superhuman audacity, struck a
+famous political blow, in Paris, called a _coup d'état_. He exploded
+a secret mine, which shattered the republic and heaved him up on to an
+imperial throne. Of course this successful adventurer was Louis Napoleon.
+
+I cannot find that, as the Prince-President of that poor, poetic,
+impracticable thing, the French Republic, much notice had been taken of
+him by the English Government;--but "Emperor" was a more respectable
+title, even worn in this way, snatched in the twinkling of an eye by a
+political _prestidigitateur_, and it was of greater worth--it had
+cost blood. So Napoleon III. was recognized by England, and at last by
+all great powers--royal and republican. Still, for a while, they showed a
+wary coldness towards the new Emperor; and he was unhappy because all the
+great European sovereigns hesitated to concede his equality to the extent
+of addressing him as "_mon frère_" (my brother). He seemed to take
+this so to heart that, after this solemn declaration that his empire
+meant peace and not war, the Queen of England put out her friendly little
+hand and said frankly, "mon frère"; and the King of Prussia and the
+Emperor of Austria followed her example; but the Czar of Russia, put his
+iron-gloved hand behind his back and frowned. Louis Napoleon did not
+forget that ever--but remembered it "excellent well" a few years later,
+when he was sending off his noble army to the Crimea.
+
+I find two charming domestic bits, in letters of the Queen and Prince,
+written in May, 1852, from Osborne. After saying that her birthday had
+passed very happily and peacefully, Her Majesty adds: "I only feel that I
+never can be half grateful enough for so much love, devotion and
+happiness. My beloved Albert was, if possible, more than usually kind and
+good in showering gifts on me. Mama was most kind, too; and the children
+did everything they could to please me."
+
+It is pleasant to see that the dear mother and grandmother never forgot
+those family anniversaries, and never was forgotten.
+
+Prince Albert writes, in a letter to the Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Coburg:
+"The children are well. They grow apace and develop new virtues daily,
+and also new naughtinesses. The virtues we try to retain, and the
+naughtinesses we throw away."
+
+This year was a memorable one for the writer of this little book, for it
+was that of her first visit to England,--of her first sight of London and
+Charles Dickens, of Westminster Abbey and the Duke of Wellington, Windsor
+Castle and Queen Victoria.
+
+I had brought a letter, from one of his most esteemed American friends,
+to the Earl of Carlisle, and from that accomplished and amiable nobleman
+I received many courtesies,--chief among them a ticket, which he obtained
+from Her Majesty direct, to one of her reserved seats in the Peeresses'
+Gallery of the House of Lords, to witness the prorogation of Parliament.
+I trust I may be pardoned if I quote a portion of my description of that
+wonderful sight,--written, ah me! so long ago:
+
+... "I found that my seat was one most desirable both for seeing the
+brilliant assembly and the august ceremony; it was near the throne, yet
+commanded a view of every part of the splendid chamber.
+
+"The gallery was soon filled with ladies, all in full-dress, jewels,
+flowers and plumes. Many of the seats of the Peers were also filled by
+their noble wives and fair daughters, most superbly and sweetly
+arrayed... Among those conspicuous for elegance and loveliness were the
+young Duchess of Northumberland and Lady Clementina Villiers, the famous
+Court beauty.
+
+"Toward one o'clock the Peers began to come in, clad in their robes of
+State. Taken as a whole they are a noble and refined-looking set of men.
+But few eyes dwelt on any of these, when there slowly entered, at the
+left of the throne, a white-haired old man, pale and spare, bowed with
+years and honors, the hero of many battles in many lands, the conqueror
+of conquerors,--the Duke! Leaning on the arm of the fair Marchioness of
+Douro, he stood, or rather tottered, before us, the grandest ruin in
+England. He presently retired to don his ducal robes and join the royal
+party at the entrance by the Victoria tower. ... The pious bishops, in
+their sacerdotal robes, made a goodly show before an ungodly world. The
+judges came in their black gowns and in all the venerable absurdity of
+their enormous wigs. Mr. Justice Talfourd the poet, a small, modest-
+looking man, was quite extinguished by his. The foreign Ministers
+assembled, nation after nation, making, when standing or seated together,
+a most peculiar and picturesque group. They shone in all colors and
+dazzled with stars, orders and jewel-bitted swords. ...
+
+"Next to me sat the eleven-year-old Princess Gouromma, daughter of the
+Rajah of Coorg. The day before she had received Christian baptism, the
+Queen standing as godmother. She is a pretty, bright-looking child, and
+was literally loaded with jewels. Opposite her sat an Indian Prince--her
+father, I was told. He was magnificently attired--girded about with a
+superb India shawl, and above his dusky brow gleamed star-like diamonds,
+for the least of which many a hard-run Christian would sell his soul. ...
+
+"At last, the guns announced the royal procession, and in a few moments
+the entire house rose silently to receive Her Majesty. The Queen was
+conducted by Prince Albert, and accompanied by all the great officers of
+State. The long train, borne by ladies, gentlemen and pages, gave a
+certain stateliness to the short, plump little person of the fair
+sovereign, and she bore herself with much dignity and grace. Prince
+Albert, it is evident, has been eminently handsome, but he is growing a
+little stout and slightly bald. Yet he is a man of right noble presence.
+Her Majesty is in fine preservation, and really a pretty and lovable-
+looking woman. I think I never saw anything sweeter than her smile of
+recognition, given to some of her friends in the gallery--to the little
+Indian Princess in especial. There is much in her face of pure
+womanliness and simple goodness; yet it is by no means wanting in
+animated intelligence. In short, after seeing her, I can well understand
+the loving loyalty of her people, and can heartily join in their prayer
+of 'God Save the Queen!'
+
+"Her Majesty wore a splendid tiara of brilliants, matched by bracelets,
+necklace and stomacher. Her soft brown hair was dressed very plainly. Her
+under-dress was of white satin, striped with gold; her robe was, of
+course, of purple velvet, trimmed with gold and ermine."
+
+"The Queen desired the lords to be seated, and commanded that her
+'faithful Commons' should be summoned. When the members of. the lower
+House had come in, the speaker read a speech, to which, I have recorded,
+Her Majesty listened, in a cold, quiet manner, sitting perfectly
+motionless, even to her fingers and eyelids. The Iron Duke standing at
+her left, bent, and trembled slightly--supporting with evident difficulty
+the ponderous sword of State. Prince Albert, sitting tall and soldier-
+like, in his handsome Field-Marshal's uniform, looked nonchalant and
+serene, but with a certain far-away expression in his eyes. The Earl of
+Derby held the crown on its gorgeous-cushion gracefully, like an
+accomplished waiter presenting a tray of ices. On a like occasion, some
+time ago, I hear the Duke of Argyle had the ill-luck to drop this crown
+from the cushion, when some of the costly jewels, jarred from their
+setting, flew about like so many bits of broken glass. But there was no
+need to cry, 'Pick up the pieces!'
+
+"After the reading of this speech, certain bills were read to Her
+Majesty, for her assent, which she gave each time with a gracious
+inclination of the head, shaking sparkles from her diamond tiara in dew-
+drops of light. At every token of acquiescence a personage whom I took
+for a herald, bowed low towards the Queen, then performed a similar
+obeisance towards the Commons--crying '_La Reine le veut!_'"
+
+"Why he should say it in French--why he did not say "The Queen wills it,"
+in her own English, I don't yet know."
+
+I went on: "This ceremony gone through with, the Lord Chancellor,
+kneeling at the foot of the throne, presented a copy of the Royal speech
+to the Queen (I had supposed she would bring it in her pocket), which she
+proceeded to read, in a manner perfectly simple, yet impressive, and in a
+voice singularly melodious and distinct. Finer reading I never heard
+anywhere; every syllable was clearly enunciated, and the emphasis fell
+with unerring precision, though gently, on the right word.
+
+"The Lord Chancellor having formally announced that Parliament stood
+prorogued until the 20th of August, Her Majesty rose as majestically as
+could be expected from one more remarkable for rosy plumptitude than
+regal altitude; Prince Albert took his place at her side; the crown and
+sword bearers took theirs in front, the train-bearers theirs in the rear,
+and the royal procession swept slowly forth, the brilliant house broke up
+and followed, and so the splendid pageant passed away--faded like a piece
+of fairy enchantment."  That's the way they do it,--except that nowadays
+the Queen does not read her own speech.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+Death of the Duke of Wellington--Birth of the Duke of Albany--The Crimean
+War--Slanders upon Prince Albert--The Prince of Wales takes a place for
+the first time upon the Throne--Incidents of Domestic Life--Prince Albert
+visits the Emperor of France--Incidents of the War.
+
+
+At Balmoral the following autumn, the Queen heard of the death of her
+most illustrious subject--the Duke of Wellington, and green are those
+"Leaves" in the journal of her "life in the Highlands," devoted to his
+memory. She wrote of him as a sovereign seldom writes of a subject,--
+glowingly, gratefully, tenderly. "One cannot think of this country,
+without 'the Duke,' our immortal hero"--she said.
+
+There was a glorious state and popular funeral for the grand old man, who
+was laid away with many honors and many tears in the crypt of St. Paul's
+Cathedral, where his brother hero, Nelson, was waiting to receive him.
+
+When early in 1853, the news came to Windsor Castle that the French
+Emperor had selected a bride, not for her wealth, or high birth, or royal
+connections, but for her beauty, and grace, and because he loved her,
+Victoria and Albert, as truly lovers as when they entered the old castle
+gates, as bride and bridegroom, felt more than ever friendly to him, and
+desirous that he should have a fair field, if no favor, to show what he
+could do for France. I am afraid they half forgot the _coup d'état_,
+and the widows, orphans and exiles it had made.
+
+In April, the Queen's fourth son, who was destined to "carry weight" in
+the shape of names,--Leopold George Duncan Albert--now Duke of Albany,
+was born in Buckingham Palace.
+
+During this year "the red planet Mars" was in the ascendant. The ugly
+Eastern Trouble, which finally culminated in the Crimean War, began to
+loom in the horizon, and England to stir herself ominously with military
+preparations. Drilling and mustering and mock combats were the order of
+the day, and the sound of the big drum was heard in the land. They had a
+grand battle-rehearsal at Chobham, and the Queen and Prince went there on
+horseback; she wearing a military riding-habit, and accompanied by the
+Duke of Coburg and her cousin George, King of Hanover.
+
+The weather was genuine "Queen's weather," bright and warm; but Prince
+Albert, who returned a few days later, to rough it, in a season of
+regular camp-life, was almost drowned out of his tent by storms. In fact,
+the warrior bold went home with a bad cold, which ended in an attack of
+measles. There was enough of this disease to go through the family, Queen
+and all. Even the guests took it, the Crown Prince of Hanover and the
+Duke and Duchess of Coburg, who on going home gave it to the Duke of
+Brabant and the Count of Flanders. I suppose there never was known such a
+royal run of measles.
+
+This year the Queen and Prince went again to Ireland, to attend the
+Dublin Industrial Exhibition, and were received with undiminished
+enthusiasm. It is remarkable that in Ireland the Queen was not once shot
+at, or struck in the face, or insulted in any way, as in her own capital.
+All the most chivalric feeling of that mercurial, but generous people,
+was called out by the sight of her frank and smiling face. She trusted
+them, and they proved worthy of the trust.
+
+After their return to Balmoral, the Prince wrote: "We should be happy
+here were it not for that horrible Eastern complication. A European war
+would be a terrible calamity. It will not do to give up all hope; still,
+what we have is small."
+
+It daily grew smaller, as the war-clouds thickened and darkened in the
+political sky. During those troublous times, when some men's hearts were
+failing them for fear, and some men's were madly panting for the fray,
+asking nothing better than to see the Lion of England pitted against the
+Bear of Russia, the Prince was in some quarters most violently and
+viciously assailed, as a designing, dangerous "influence behind the
+throne"--treacherous to England, and so to England's Queen. So
+industriously was this monstrous slander spread abroad, that the story
+went, and by some simple souls was believed, that "the blameless Prince"
+had been arrested for high treason, and lodged in the Tower! Some had it
+that he had gone in through the old Traitors' Grate, and that they were
+furbishing up the old axe and block for his handsome head! Then the rumor
+ran that the Queen had also been arrested, and was to be consigned to the
+grim old fortress, or that she insisted on going with her husband and
+sharing his dungeon. Thousands of English. people actually assembled
+about the Tower to see them brought in,--and yet this was not on All-
+Fools' Day.
+
+Poor Baron Stockmar was also suspected of dark political intrigues and
+practices detrimental to the peace and honor of England. He was, in fact,
+accused of being a spy and a conspirator--which was absurdity itself. He
+was, it seems to me, a high-minded, kindly old man, a political
+philosopher and moralist--rather opinionated always, and at times a
+little patronizing towards his royal pupils; but if they did not object
+to this, it was no concern of other people. He certainly had a shrewd, as
+well as a philosophic mind--was a sagacious "clerk of the weather" in
+European politics,--and I suppose a better friend man or woman never had
+than the Prince and the Queen found in this much distrusted old German
+Baron.
+
+Though Prince Albert wrote at this time about having "a world of
+torment," he really took matters very patiently and philosophically. In
+the devotion of his wife, in the affection of his children, in his
+beloved organ, "the only instrument," he said, "for expressing one's
+feelings," he found consolation and peace. He wrote,--"Victoria has taken
+the whole affair greatly to heart, and is excessively indignant at the
+attacks." But a triumphant refutation, in both Houses of Parliament, of
+all these slanders, consoled her much; and on the anniversary of her
+marriage she was able to write--"This blessed day is full of joyful and
+tender emotions. Fourteen happy years have passed, and I confidently
+trust many more will pass, and find us in old age, as we are now, happily
+and devotedly united! Trials we must have; but what are they if we are
+together?"
+
+In March, 1854, the Queen and Prince went to Osborne to visit the
+magnificent fleet of vessels which had been assembled at Spithead. Her
+Majesty wrote to Lord Aberdeen--"We are just starting to see the fleet,
+which is to sail at once for its important destination. It will be a
+solemn moment! Many a heart will be very heavy, and many a prayer,
+including our own, will be offered up for its safety and glory!"
+
+Ah! when those beautiful ships went sailing away, with their white sails
+spread, and the royal colors flying, death sat "up aloft," instead of the
+"sweet little cherub" popularly supposed to be perched there, and winds
+from the long burial-trenches of the battle-field played among the
+shrouds.
+
+King Frederick William of Prussia seemed to think that he could put an
+end to this little unpleasantness, and wrote a long letter to the Queen
+of England, paternally advising her to make some concessions to the
+Emperor of Russia, which concessions she thought would be weak and
+unworthy. Her reply reveals her characteristic high courage. One
+quotation, which she makes from Shakspeare, is admirable:
+
+        "Beware
+  Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
+  Bear't, that the opposed may beware,
+  of thee."
+
+Still, as we look back, it does seem as though with the wit of the Queen,
+the wisdom of Prince Albert, the philosophy of Baron Stockmar,--the
+philanthropy of Exeter Hall, and the piety of the Bench of Bishops, some
+sort of peaceful arrangement might have been effected, and the Crimean
+war left out of history. But then we should not have had the touching
+picture of the lion and the unicorn charging on the enemy together, not
+for England or France, but all for poor Turkey; and Mr. Tennyson could
+not have written his "Charge of the Light Brigade," which would have been
+a great loss to elocutionists. There were in Parliament a few poor-
+spirited economists and soft-hearted humanitarians who would fain have
+prevented that mighty drain of treasure and of the best blood of England-
+holding, with John Bright, that this war was "neither just nor
+necessary"; but they were "whistling against the wind." There was one
+rich English quaker, with a heart like a tender woman's and a face like a
+cherub's, who actually went over to Russia to labor with "friend
+Nicholas" against this war. All in vain! the Czar was deeply moved, of
+course, but would not give in, or give up.
+
+On the 3d of March the Queen went to Parliament to receive the address of
+both Houses in answer to her message which announced the opening of the
+war. On this important occasion the young Prince of Wales took a place
+for the first time with his mother and father on the throne. He looked
+taller and graver than usual. His heart glowed with martial fire. His
+voice, too, if he had been allowed to speak, would have been all for war.
+A few days before this, the Queen, after seeing off the first division of
+troops for the Baltic, had so felt the soldier-blood of her father
+tingling in her veins, that she wrote: "I am very enthusiastic about my
+dear army and navy, and I wish I had two sons in both now." But in later
+years the widowed Queen is said to have been not eager to have any of her
+sons, _his_ sons, peril their lives in battle.
+
+Though the Prince of Wales now had assigned to him a more honorable place
+on the British throne than the British Constitution permitted his father,
+to occupy, he was still perfectly amenable to that father's authority.
+
+An English gentleman lately told me of an instance of the wise exercise
+of that authority. The Prince-Consort and his son were riding across a
+London toll-bridge, the keeper of which, on receiving his toll,
+respectfully saluted them. Prince Albert courteously inclined his head,
+touching his hat, but Prince Albert Edward dashed carelessly on, yet only
+to return a minute after, laughing and blushing, to obey his father's
+command--"My son, go back and return that man's salute."
+
+The Queen was so enthusiastic that she with pleasure saw launched--
+indeed, christened herself--a war-vessel bearing the name and likeness of
+her "dearest Albert"--that humane, amiable, peace-loving man! There was
+something incongruous in it, as there is in all associations between war
+and good peace-lovers and Christ-lovers.
+
+Amid these wars and rumors of wars, it is comforting to read in that
+admirable and most comprehensive work, "The Life of His Royal Highness,
+the Prince-Consort, by Sir Theodore Martin, K.C.B.," of pleasant little
+domestic events, like a children's May-day ball at Buckingham Palace,
+given on Prince Arthur's birthday, when two hundred children were made
+happy and made others happier. Then there were great times at Osborne for
+the Royal children on their mother's birthday, when a charming house--the
+Swiss cottage--and its grounds, were made over to them, to have and to
+hold, as their very own. It was not wholly for a play-house and play-
+ground, but partly as a means of instruction in many things. In the
+perfectly-appointed kitchen of the cottage the little Princesses learned
+to perform many domestic tasks, and to cook different kinds of plain
+dishes as well as cakes and tarts--in short, to perform the ordinary
+duties of housekeepers; while in the grounds and gardens the young
+Princes used to work two or three hours a day under the direction of a
+gardener, getting regular certificates of labor performed, which they
+presented to their father, who always paid them as he would have paid any
+laborer for the same amount and quality of work--never more, never less.
+Each boy had his own hoe and spade, which not a Princeling among them all
+considered it _infra-dig._ to use. The two eldest boys, Albert
+Edward and Alfred, also constructed under their father's directions a
+small fortress perfect in all its details. All the work on this military
+structure, even to the making of the bricks, was done by the Princes. The
+little Princesses also worked in the gardens, each having her own plot,
+marked with her own name, from Victoria to Beatrice. There was a museum
+of natural history attached to the cottage, and we can easily imagine the
+wonderful specimens of entomology and ornithology there to be found. Ah!
+have any of the grown-up Royal Highnesses ever known the comfort and fun
+in their grand palaces that they had in the merry old Swiss cottage days?
+
+In the autumn of 1854 Prince Albert went over to Boulogne for a little
+friendly visit to England's chief ally, taking with him little Arthur. He
+seems to have found the French Emperor a little stiff and cold at first,
+as he wrote to the Queen, "The Emperor thaws more and more." In the
+sunshine of that genial presence he had to thaw. The Prince adds: "He
+told me one of the deepest impressions ever made upon him was when he
+arrived in London shortly after King William's death and saw you at the
+age of eighteen going to open Parliament for the first time."
+
+The Prince made a deep impression on the Emperor. Two men could not be
+more unlike. The character of the one was crystal clear, and deeper than
+it appeared--the character of the other was murky and mysterious, and
+shallower than it seemed.
+
+This must have been a season of great anxiety and sadness for the Queen.
+The guns of Alma and Sebastopol echoed solemnly among her beloved
+mountains. In her journal there is this year only one Balmoral entry--not
+the account of any Highland expedition or festivity, but the mention of
+an eloquent sermon by the Rev. Norman McLeod, and of his prayer, which
+she says was "very touching," and added, "His allusions to us were so
+simple, saying after his mention of us, 'Bless their children.' It gave
+me a lump in my throat, as also when he prayed for the dying, the
+wounded, the widow, and the orphan."
+
+There came a few months later a ghastly ally of the Russians into the
+fight--cholera--which, joined to the two terrible winter months,
+"Generals January and February," as the Czar called them, made sad havoc
+in the English and French forces, but did not redeem the fortunes of the
+Russians. Much mal-administration in regard to army supplies brought
+terrible hardships upon the English troops, and accomplished the
+impossible in revealing in them new qualities of bravery and heroic
+endurance.
+
+It was an awful war, and it lasted as long as, and a little longer than,
+the Czar, who died in March, 1855. "of pulmonary apoplexy," it was
+announced, though the rumor ran, that, resolved not to survive
+Sebastopol, he had taken his own unhappy life. With his death the war was
+virtually ended, and his son Alexander made peace as soon as he decently
+could with the triumphant enemies of his father.
+
+Through all this distressful time the Queen and the Prince-Consort
+manifested the deepest sympathy for, as well as pride in, the English
+soldiers. They had an intense pity for the poor men in the trenches,
+badly clad and half starved, grand, patient, ill-used, uncomplaining
+fellows!
+
+"My heart bleeds to think of it," wrote the Prince, of the army
+administration. He corresponded with Florence Nightingale, and encouraged
+her in her brave and saintly mission. When the sick and wounded began to
+arrive, in England both he and the Queen were faithful in visiting them
+in the hospitals, and Her Majesty had a peculiar sad joy in rewarding the
+bravest of the brave with the gift of the Crimean medal. In a private
+letter she gives a description of the touching scene. She says:
+
+"From the highest Prince of the blood to the lowest private, all received
+the same distinction for the bravest conduct in the severest actions....
+Noble fellows! I own I feel for them as though they were my own
+children.... They were so touched, so pleased! Many, I hear, cried, and
+they won't hear of giving up their medals to have their names engraved
+upon them for fear that they may not receive the identical ones put into
+their hands by me. Several came by in a sadly mutilated state."
+
+One of these heroes, young Sir Thomas Trowbridge, who had had one leg and
+the foot of the other carried away by a round shot at Inkermann, was
+dragged in a Bath-chair to the Queen, who, when she gave him his medal,
+offered to make him one of her _Aides-de-Camp_, to which the gallant
+and loyal soldier replied, "I am amply repaid for everything." Poor
+fellow! I wonder if he continued to say that all his mutilated life?
+
+Whenever during this war there was a hitch, or halt, in the victorious
+march of English arms, any disaster or disgrace in the Crimea, the
+attacks upon the Prince-Consort were renewed,--there were even threats of
+impeachment;--but when the "cruel war was over," the calumnies were over
+also. They were always as absurd as unfounded. Aside from his manly sense
+of honor the Prince had by that time, at least, ten good reasons for
+being loyal to England--an English wife and nine English children.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+The Emperor and Empress of France visit Windsor--They are entertained by
+the City of London--Scene at the Opera--The Queen returns the Emperor's
+call--Splendor of the Imperial Hospitality.
+
+
+The Queen's kind heart was really pained by the sudden death of the Czar,
+her sometime friend and "brother"--whose visit to Windsor was brought by
+the startling event vividly to her mind--yet she turned from his august
+shade to welcome one of his living conquerors, the Emperor Napoleon, who,
+with his beautiful wife, came this spring to visit her and the Prince.
+She had had prepared for the visitors the most splendid suite of
+apartments--among them the very bedroom once occupied by the Emperor
+Nicholas. It was the best "spare room" of the Castle, and the one
+generally allotted to first-class monarchs--Louis Philippe had occupied
+it. What stuff for ghosts for the bedside of Louis Napoleon did he and
+the Czar supply! A few days before the Emperor and Empress arrived, the
+Queen had a visit from the poor ex-Queen, Marie Amélie. There is a
+touching entry in Her Majesty's diary, regarding this visit. By the way,
+I would state that whenever I quote from Her Majesty's diary, it is
+through the medium of Sir Theodore Martin's book, and by his kind
+permission.
+
+The Queen wrote: "It made us both so sad to see her drive away in a plain
+coach, with miserable post-horses, and to think that this was the Queen
+of the French, and that six years ago her husband was surrounded by the
+same pomp and grandeur which three days hence would surround his
+successor."
+
+There is something exquisitely tender and pitiful in this. Most people,
+royal or republican, would "consider it not so deeply." The world has
+grown so familiar with the see-saw of French royalty, that a fall or a
+flight, exile or abdication moves it but little. In the old
+_guillotine_ times, there _were_ sensations.
+
+England's great ally, and his lovely wife, Eugénie,--every inch an
+Empress,--were received with tremendous enthusiasm. Their passage through
+London was one long ovation. The Times of that date gives allowing
+account of the crowds and the excitement. It states also, that as they
+were passing King Street, the Emperor "was observed to draw the attention
+of the Empress to the house which he had occupied in former days,"--
+respectable lodgings, doubtless, but how different from the Tuileries!
+
+The Queen gives an interesting account of what seemed a long, and was an
+impatient waiting for her guests, whom the Prince-Consort had gone to
+meet. At length, they saw "the advanced guard of the escort--then the
+cheers of the crowd broke forth. The outriders appeared--the doors
+opened, I stepped out, the children close behind me; the band struck up
+'_Partant pour la Syrie_,' the trumpets sounded, and the open carriage,
+with the Emperor and Empress, Albert sitting opposite them, drove up and
+they got out... I advanced and embraced the Emperor, who received two
+salutes on either cheek from me--having first kissed my hand." The
+English Queen did not do things by halves, any more than the English
+people. She then embraced the Empress, whom she describes as "very gentle
+and graceful, but evidently very nervous." The children were then
+presented, "Vicky, with alarmed eyes, making very low curtsies," and
+Bertie having the honor of an embrace from the Emperor. Then they all
+went up-stairs, Prince. Albert conducting the Empress, who at first
+modestly declined to precede the Queen. Her Majesty followed on the arm
+of the Emperor, who proudly informed her that he had once been in her
+service as special constable against those unstable enemies, the
+Chartists.
+
+The Queen and Prince soon came to greatly like the Emperor and admire the
+Empress. The Queen wrote of the former: "He is very quiet and amiable,
+and easy to get on with... Nothing can be more civil and well-bred than
+the Emperor's manner--so full of tact."
+
+Of Eugenie she wrote: "She is full of courage and spirit, and yet so
+gentle, with such innocence; ... with all her great liveliness, she has
+the prettiest and most modest manner." Later, Her Majesty, with a rare
+generosity, showing that there was not room in her large heart even, for
+any petty feeling, wrote in her private diary, of that beautiful and
+brilliant woman: "I am delighted to see how much Albert likes and admires
+her."
+
+There was a State-ball at Windsor, at which Eugénie shone resplendent.
+The Queen danced with the Emperor--and with her imaginative mind, found
+cause for wondering reflection in the little circumstance, for she says:
+"How strange to think that I, the granddaughter of George III., should
+dance with the Emperor Napoleon III.--nephew of England's greatest enemy,
+now my dearest and most intimate ally--in the _Waterloo Room_, and
+this ally only six years ago, living in this country an exile, poor and
+unthought of!"
+
+The Queen, of course, invested the Emperor with the Order of the Garter.
+It has been in its time bestowed on monarchs less worthy the honor. It is
+true, he did not come very heroically by his imperial crown--but when
+crowns are lying about loose, who can blame a man for helping himself?
+
+The city gave the Emperor and Empress a great reception and banquet at
+Guildhall, and in the evening there was a memorable visit to the opera.
+The imperial and royal party drove from Buckingham Palace through a dense
+crowd and illuminated streets. Arrived at the royal box, the Queen took
+the Emperor by the hand, and smiling her sweetest--which is saying a good
+deal--presented him to the audience. Immense enthusiasm! Then Prince
+Albert led forward the lovely Empress, and the enthusiasm was unbounded.
+It must be that this still beautiful, though sorrowful woman, on whose
+head a fierce tempest of misfortune has beaten--the most piteous,
+discrowned, blanched head since Marie Antoinette--sometimes remembers
+those happy and glorious days, and that the two august widows talk over
+them together.
+
+At last came the hour of farewells, and the Emperor departed with his
+pretty, tearful wife--the band playing his mother's air, _Partant pour
+la Syrie_, and his heart full of pride and gratitude. In a letter
+which he addressed to the Queen, soon after reaching home, is revealed
+one cause of his gratitude. After saying many pleasant things about the
+kind and gracious reception which had been accorded him, and the
+impression which the sight of the happy home-life of Windsor had made
+upon him, he says: "Your Majesty has also touched me to the heart by the
+delicacy of the consideration shown to the Empress; for nothing pleases
+more than to see the person one loves become the object of such
+flattering attention."
+
+That summer there appeared among the royal children at Osborne a sudden
+illness, which soon put on royal livery, and was recognized as scarlet
+fever. There was, of course, great alarm--but nothing very serious came
+of it. The two elder children escaped the infection, and were allowed to
+go to Paris with their parents, who in July returned the visit of the
+Emperor and Empress. They went in their yacht to Boulogne, where the
+Emperor met them and escorted them to the railway on horseback. He looked
+best, almost handsome, on horseback. Arrived at Paris, they found the
+whole city decorated, as only the French know how to decorate, and gay,
+enthusiastic crowds cheering, as only the French know how to cheer. They
+drove through splendid boulevards, through the Bois de Boulogne, over the
+bridge, to the Palace of St. Cloud--and everywhere there were the
+imperial troops, artillery, cavalry and zouaves, their bands playing "God
+Save the Queen." Those only who knew Paris under the Empire, can realize
+what that reception was, and how magnificent were the _fêtes_ and how
+grand the reviews of the next ten days. Of the arrival at St. Cloud
+the Queen writes: "In all the blaze of light from lamps and torches,
+amidst the roar of cannon and bands and drums and cheers, we reached the
+palace. The Empress, with the Princess Mathilde and the ladies, received
+us at the door, and took us up a beautiful staircase, lined with the
+splendid _Cent-Guardes,_ who are magnificent men, very like our Life
+Guards... We went through the rooms at once to our own, which are
+charming... I felt quite bewildered, but enchanted, everything is so
+beautiful."
+
+This palace we know was burned during the siege. The last time I visited
+the ruins, I stood for some minutes gazing through a rusty grating into
+the noble vestibule, through which so many royal visitors had passed. Its
+blackened walls and broken and prostrate marbles are overspread by a wild
+natural growth--a green shroud wrapping the ghastly ruin;--or rather, it
+was like an incursion of a mob of rough vegetation, for there were
+neither delicate ferns, nor poetic ivy, but democratic grass and
+republican groundsel and communistic thistles and nettles. In place of
+the splendid _Cent-Guardes_ stood tall, impudent weeds; in place of
+courtiers, the supple and bending briar; while up the steps, which the
+Queen and Empress and their ladies ascended that night, pert little
+_grisettes_ of _marguerites_ were climbing.
+
+So perfect was the hospitality of the Emperor that they had things as
+English as possible at the Palace-even providing an English chaplain for
+Sunday morning. In the afternoon, however, he backslid into French
+irreligion and natural depravity, and they all went to enjoy the fresh
+air, the sight of the trees, the flowers and the children in the Bois de
+Boulogne. The next day they went into the city to the _Exposition des
+Beaux Arts,_ and to the _Elysée_ for lunch and a reception--then they all
+drove to the lovely _Sainte Chapelle_ and the _Palais de Justice_. There
+the Emperor pointed out the old _Conciergerie_, and said--"There is where
+I was imprisoned." Doubtless he thought that was a more interesting
+historical fact than the imprisonment of poor Marie Antoinette, in the
+same grim building. There was also a visit to the Italian opera, where a
+very pretty surprise awaited the guests. At the close of the ballet, the
+scene suddenly changed to a view of Windsor--including the arrival of the
+Emperor and Empress. "_God Save the Queen_" was sung superbly, and
+rapturously applauded. One day the Queen, Prince, and Princess Royal,
+dressed very plainly, took a hired carriage and had a long _incognito_
+drive through Paris. They enjoyed this "lark" immensely. Then there was a
+grand ball at the _Hotel de Ville_, and a grand review on the _Champ de
+Mars_, and a visit by torchlight to the tomb of _the_ Napoleon, under the
+dome of the _Invalides_, with the accompaniment of solemn organ-
+playing within the church, and a grand midsummer storm outside, with
+thunder and lightning. The French do so well understand how to manage
+these things!
+
+The grandest thing of all was a State ball in Versailles;--that
+magnificent but mournful, almost monumental pile, being gaily decorated
+and illuminated--almost transformed out of its tragic traditions. What a
+charming picture of her hostess the Queen gives us:
+
+"The Empress met us at the top of the staircase, looking like a fairy
+queen, or nymph, in a white dress, trimmed with grass and diamonds,--a
+beautiful _tour de corsage_ of diamonds round the top of her dress;--the
+same round her waist, and a corresponding _coiffure_, with her Spanish
+and Portuguese orders."
+
+She must have been a lovely vision. The Emperor thought so, for
+(according to the Queen) forgetting that it is not "good form" for a man
+to admire or compliment his own wife, he exclaimed, as she appeared:
+"_Comme tu es belle! _" ("How beautiful you are!")
+
+I am afraid he was not always so polite. During her first season at the
+Tuileries, which she called "a beautiful prison," and which is now as
+much a thing of the past as the Bastile, she often in her gay, impulsive
+way offended against the stern laws of Court etiquette, and was reproved
+for a lack of dignity. Once at a reception she suddenly perceived a
+little way down the line an old school-friend, and, hurrying forward,
+kissed her affectionately. It was nice for the young lady, but the
+Emperor frowned and said, in that cold marital tone which cuts like an
+east wind: "Madame, you forget that you are the Empress!"
+
+In a letter from the Prince to his uncle Leopold I find this suggestive
+sentence in reference to the ball at Versailles: "Victoria made her
+toilette in Marie Antoinette's boudoir." It would almost seem the English
+Queen might have feared to see in her dressing-glass a vision of the
+French Queen's proud young head wearing a diadem as brilliant as her own,
+or perhaps that cruel crown of silver--her terror-whitened hair.
+
+The parting was sad. The Empress "could not bring herself to face it"; so
+the Queen went to her room with the Emperor, who said: "Eugénie, here is
+the Queen." "Then," adds Her Majesty, "she came and gave me a beautiful
+fan and a rose and heliotrope from the garden, and Vicky a bracelet set
+with rubies and diamonds containing her hair, with which Vicky was
+delighted."
+
+The Emperor went with them all the way to Boulogne and saw them on board
+their yacht; then came embracings and _adieux_, and all was over.
+
+The next morning early they reached Osborne and were received at the
+beach by Prince Alfred and his little brothers, to whom Albert Edward,
+big with the wonders of Paris, was like a hero out of a fairy book. Near
+the house waited the sisters, Helena and Louise, and in the house the
+invalid--"poor, dear Alice!"--for whom the joy of that return was almost
+too much.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Betrothal of the Princess Royal--Birth of the Prince Imperial of France--
+More visitors and visitings--The Emperor And Empress of Mexico--Marriage
+of the Princess Royal--The attendant festivities.
+
+
+At Balmoral, where they took possession of the new Castle, the Queen and
+Prince received the news of the approaching fall of Sebastopol, for it
+was not down yet. It finally fell amid a scene of awful conflagration and
+explosions--the work of the desperate Russians themselves.
+
+The peace-rejoicings did not come till later, but in the new house at
+Balmoral there was a new joy, though one not quite unmixed with sadness,
+in the love and happy betrothal of the Princess Victoria. In her journal
+the Queen tells the old, old story very quietly: "Our dear Victoria was
+this day engaged to Prince Frederick William of Prussia. He had already
+spoken to us of his wishes, but were uncertain, on account of her extreme
+youth, whether he should speak to her or wait till he should come back
+again. However, we felt it was better he should do so, and, during our
+ride up Craig-na-Ban this afternoon; he picked a piece of white heather
+(the emblem of good luck), which he gave to her." This it seems broke the
+ice, and so the poetic Prince (all German Princes, except perhaps
+Bismarck, are poetic and romantic) told his love and offered his hand,
+which was not rejected. Then came a few weeks of courtship, doubtless as
+bright and sweet to the royal pair of lovers as was a similar season to
+Robert  Burns and "Highland Mary"--for love levels up and levels down--
+and then young Fritz returned to Germany, leaving behind him a fond heart
+and a tearful little face round and fair.
+
+From this time till the marriage of the Princess Royal, which was not
+till after her seventeenth birthday in 1858, the Prince-Consort devoted
+himself more and more to the education of this beloved daughter--in
+history, art, literature, and religion. He conversed much and most
+seriously with her in preparation for her confirmation. He found that
+this work of mental and moral development was "its own exceeding great
+reward."
+
+The character of the Princess Royal seems to have been in some respects
+like that of the Princess Charlotte of Wales. She was as high-spirited,
+strong-willed, gay, free, and fearless; but with infinitely better and
+purer domestic and social influences, she grew up into a nobler and more
+gracious young womanhood. Intellectually and morally, she was her
+father's creation; intellectually and morally, poor Princess Charlotte
+was worse than fatherless.
+
+But I must hurry on with the hurrying years. The Prince, writing to Baron
+Stockmar in March, 1856, says: "The telegraph has just brought the news
+of the Empress having been safely delivered of a son. Great will be the
+rejoicing in the Tuileries."
+
+This baby born in the purple was the Prince Imperial, whose fate beggars
+tragedy; who went to gather laurels on an African desert and fell a
+victim to a savage ambuscade--his beautiful body stuck almost as full of
+cruel darts as that of the martyred young St. Sebastian.
+
+On March 21st the long-delayed treaty of peace was signed. After all the
+waste, the agony, the bloodshed, the Prince wrote: "It is not such as we
+could have wished." But he had learned to bear these little
+disappointments.
+
+Prince Alfred began his studies for the navy. Fritz of Prussia came over
+on a visit to his betrothed, and his father and mother soon followed--
+coming to get better acquainted with their daughter-in-law to be. Then
+into the royal circle there came another royal guest, all unbidden--the
+king whose name is Death. The Prince of Leiningen--the Queen's half-
+brother in blood, but whole brother in heart--died, to her great grief;
+and soon after there passed away her beloved aunt, the Duchess of
+Gloucester, a good and amiable woman, and the last of the fifteen
+children of George the Third and Queen Charlotte. But here life balanced
+death, for on April 14th another daughter was born in Buckingham Palace.
+The Prince in a letter to his step-mother speaks of the baby as "thriving
+famously, and prettier than babies usually are." He adds, "Mama--Aunt,
+Vicky and her bridegroom are to be the little one's sponsors, and she is
+to receive the historical, romantic, euphonious, and melodious names of
+Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodora."
+
+That summer there came two very interesting royal visitors to Windsor--
+the young Princess Charlotte of Belgium and her betrothed husband, the
+Archduke Maximilian of Austria. Prince Albert wrote of the young girl:
+"Charlotte's whole being seems to me to have been warmed and unfolded by
+the love which is kindled in her heart." To his uncle Leopold he wrote:"
+I wish you joy at having got such a husband for dear Charlotte, as I am
+sure he is quite worthy of her and will make her happy."
+
+Just ten years from that time the Emperor Maximilian, standing before a
+file of Mexican soldiers at Queretaro, took out his watch, which he would
+never more need, and, pressing a spring, revealed in its case a miniature
+of the lovely Empress Charlotte, which he kissed tenderly. Then, handing
+the watch to the priest at his side, he said: "Carry this souvenir to my
+dear wife in Europe, and if she ever be able to understand you, say that
+my eyes closed with the impression of her image, which I shall carry with
+me above."
+
+She never did understand. She lives in a phantom Court, believing herself
+still Empress of Mexico, and that the Emperor will soon come home from
+the wars to her and the throne.
+
+There was this summer a memorable show in Hyde Park, when Queen Victoria
+on horseback, in her becoming military dress, pinned with her own hands
+on to the coats of a large number of heroes of the great war the coveted
+Victoria Cross. Ah! they were proud and she was prouder. She is a true
+soldier's daughter; her heart always thrills at deeds of valor and warms
+at sight of a hero, however humble.
+
+The Prince went over to his cousin Charlotte's wedding, and the Queen,
+compelled to stay behind, wrote to King Leopold that her letting her
+husband, go without her was a great proof of her love for her uncle. "You
+cannot think," she said, "how completely forlorn I feel when he is away,
+or how I count the hours till he returns. All the children are as nothing
+when he is away. It seems as if the whole life of the house and home were
+gone."
+
+Again, how like a loving Scotch peasant wife:
+
+  "There's na luck about the house,
+  There's na luck at a'--
+
+  There's little pleasure in the house,
+  When my guid mon's awa'."
+
+In August the Emperor and Empress made a flying visit in their yacht to
+Osborne and talked over the latest political events, the new phases of
+affairs, and, doubtless, the new babies; and, a little later, the Queen
+and Prince ran over to Cherbourg in their yacht, taking six of the
+children. There was a perfect nursery of the little ones, "rocked in the
+cradle of the deep." This was such a complete "surprise party," that the
+Emperor and Empress away in Paris, knew nothing about it. They all took a
+pleasant little excursion into the lovely country of Normandy in
+_chars-à-bancs_, with bells on the post-horses, doubtless, and everything
+gay and delightful and novel to the children,--especially French
+sunshine.
+
+This year the Balmoral stay was greatly saddened by the news of the Sepoy
+rebellion, of the tragedies of Cawnpore, and the unspeakable atrocities
+of Nana Sahib. Young people nowadays know little about that ghastly war,
+except as connected with the pretty poetical story of the relief of
+Lucknow, and Jessie Brown; but, at the time, it was an awfully real
+thing, and not in the least poetical or romantic.
+
+The marriage of the Princess Royal was fixed for January 25, 1858. Her
+father wrote from Balmoral hi the autumn; "Vicky suffers under the
+feeling that every spot she visits she has to greet for the last time as
+home... The departure from here will, be a great trial to us all,
+especially to Vicky, who leaves it for good and all; and the good, simple
+Highlanders, who are very fond of us, are constantly saying to her, and
+often with tears, 'I suppose we shall never see you again?' which
+naturally makes her feel more keenly."
+
+At last the wedding day approached and the royal guests began to arrive
+at Buckingham Palace, and they poured in till on fair days a King or
+Queen, a Prince or Princess looked out of nearly every window; and when
+there was a fog, collisions of crowned heads occurred in the corridors.
+On the day the Court left Windsor the Queen wrote: "Went to look at the
+rooms prepared for Vicky's honeymoon; very pretty... We took a short walk
+with Vicky, who was dreadfully upset at this real break in her life; the
+real separation from her childhood."
+
+These be little things perhaps, but beautiful little human things,
+showing the warm love and tender sympathy which united this family,
+supposed to be lifted high and dry above ordinary humanity, among the
+arid and icy grandeurs of royalty.
+
+There was a gay little ball one evening with Highnesses and Serenities
+dancing and whirling and chasséing, and a "_grande chaine_" of half
+of the sovereigns of Europe--all looking very much like other people. The
+Queen wrote: "Ernest (Duke of Coburg) said it seemed like a dream to see
+Vicky dance as a bride, just as I did eighteen years ago, and I still (so
+he said) looking very young. In 1840, poor dear papa (late Duke of
+Coburg) danced with me as Ernest danced with Vicky."
+
+Afterwards there was a grand ball, attended by over a thousand of the
+elect, and for the multitude there were dramatic and musical
+entertainments. At Her Majesty's Theatre one night the famous tragedian,
+Mr. Phelps, and the great actress, Miss Helen Faucit, in the tragedy of
+_Macbeth_, froze the blue blood of a whole tier of royal personages
+and made them realize what crowns were worth, and how little they had
+earned theirs, by showing what men and women will go through with to
+secure one. The Emperor and Empress of France were not among the guests.
+They had been a little upset by an event more tragic than are most
+marriages--the attempt of Orsini to blow up their carriage, by the
+explosion of hand-grenades near the entrance of the Italian Opera. They
+had been only slightly hurt, but some eighty innocent people in the crowd
+had been either killed or wounded. The white dress of the Empress was
+sprinkled with blood, yet she went to her box and sat out the
+performance. What nerve these imperial people have!
+
+The Queen's account of this glad, sad time of the marriage is very
+natural, moving and maternal. First, there was the domestic and Court
+sensation of the arrival of the bridegroom, Prince "Fritz," whom the
+Prince-Consort had gone to meet, and all the Court awaited. "I met him,"
+says the Queen, "at the bottom of the staircase, very warmly; he was pale
+and nervous. At the top of the staircase Vicky received him, with Alice."
+That afternoon all the royal people witnessed a grand dramatic
+performance of "Taming the Horse," with Mr. Rarey as "leading man." In
+the evening they went to the opera. The next day, Sunday, the presents
+were shown--a marvelous collection of jewels, plate, lace and India
+shawls, and they had service and listened to a sermon. It is wonderful
+what these great people can get through with! Coming in from a walk they
+found a lot of new presents added to the great pile. The Queen writes:
+"Dear Vicky gave me a brooch, a very pretty one, containing her hair, and
+clasping me in her arms, said,' I hope to be worthy to be your child.'"
+
+From all I hear I should say that fond hope has been realized in a noble
+and beneficent life. The Crown Princess of Germany is a woman greatly
+loved and honored.
+
+On the wedding day the Queen wrote: "The second most eventful day of my
+life, as regards feelings; I felt as if I were being married over again
+myself... While dressing, dearest Vicky came in to see me, looking well
+and composed."
+
+The Princess Royal, like her mother, was married in the Chapel of St.
+James' Palace, and things went on very much as on that memorable wedding
+day--always spoken of by the Queen as "blessed." She now could describe
+more as a spectator the shouting, the bell-ringing, the cheering and
+trumpetings, and the brave sight of the procession. Prince Albert and
+King Leopold and "the two eldest boys went first. Then the three girls
+(Alice, Helena and Louise), in pink satin, lace and flowers." There were
+eight bridesmaids in "white tulle, with wreaths and bouquets of roses and
+white heather." That was a pretty idea, using the simple betrothal flower
+of the Prince and Princess-for "luck."
+
+The Queen speaks of "Mama looking so handsome in violet velvet; trimmed
+with ermine." Ah, the young Victoria was the only daughter of _her_
+Victoria, who as a bride was to receive on her brow that grandmother's
+kiss--dearer and holier than any priestly benediction. I like to read
+that immediately after the ceremony the bride "kissed her grandmama."
+
+After the wedding breakfast at the Palace the bridal pair, Victoria and
+Frederick William, drove away just as eighteen years before Victoria and
+Albert had driven away--the same state, the same popular excitement, in
+kind if not in degree, and, let us trust, a like amount of love and joy.
+But this happy pair did not drive all the way to Windsor. The waiting
+train, the iron horse snorting with impatience, showed how the world had
+moved on since that other wedding; but the perennial Eton boys were on
+hand for these lovers also, wearing the same tall hats and short jackets,
+cheering in the same mad way, so that the Queen herself would hardly have
+suspected them to be the other boys' sons, or younger brothers. They
+"scored one" above their honored predecessors by dragging the carriage
+from the Windsor station to the Castle.
+
+The Court soon followed to Windsor with thirty-five of the royal guests,
+and there were banquets and more investings, till it would seem that the
+Queen's stock of jeweled garters must be running low. Then back to town
+for more presents and operas and plays, and addresses of congratulation,
+and at last came the dismal morning of separation. The day before, the
+Queen had written: "The last day of our dear child being with us, which
+is incredible, and makes me feel at times quite sick at heart." She
+records that that poor child exclaimed, "I think it will kill me to take
+leave of dear papa!"
+
+The next morning, she writes," Vicky came with a very sad face to my
+room. Here we embraced each other tenderly, and our tears flowed fast."
+
+Then there were leave-takings from the loving grandmama and the younger
+brothers and sisters ("Bertie" and Alfred going with their father to
+Gravesend, to see the bridal party embarked), and hardest of all, the
+parting of the child from the mother.
+
+To quote again: "A dreadful moment and a dreadful day! Such sickness came
+over me--real heart-ache,--when I thought of our dearest child being
+gone, and for so long... It began to snow before Vicky went, and
+continued to do so without intermission all day."
+
+In spite of the dreary weather, I am told that thousands of London people
+were assembled in the streets to catch a last glimpse of the popular
+Princess Royal. They could hardly recognize her pleasant, rosy, child-
+like face--it was so sad, so swollen with weeping. They did not then look
+with much favor on the handsome Prussian Prince at her side--and one
+loyal Briton shouted out, "If he doesn't treat you well, come back to
+us!" That made her laugh. I believe he did treat her well, and that she
+has been always happy as a wife, though for a time she is said to have
+fretted against the restraints of German Court etiquette, which bristled
+all round her. She found that the straight and narrow ways of that
+princely paradise were not hedged with roses, as at home, but with
+briars. Some she respected, and some she bravely broke through.
+
+The little bride was most warmly received in her new home, and about the
+anniversary of her own marriage-day, the Queen had the happiness of
+receiving from her new son this laconic telegram: "The whole royal family
+is enchanted with my wife. F. W."
+
+Afterwards, in writing to her uncle, of her daughter's success at the
+Prussian Court, and of her happiness, the Queen says: "But her heart
+often yearns for home and those she loves dearly--above all, her dear
+papa, for whom she has _un culte_ (a worship) which is touching and
+delightful to see."
+
+Her father returned this "worship" by tenderness and devotion unfailing
+and unwearying. His letters to the Crown Princess are perhaps the
+sweetest and noblest, most thoughtful and finished of his writings. They
+show that he respected as well as loved his correspondent, of whom,
+indeed, he had spoken to her husband as one having "a man's head and a
+child's heart." His letters to his uncle and the Baron are full of his
+joy, intellectual and affectional, in this his first-born daughter; but
+the last-born was not forgotten. In one letter he writes: "Little
+Beatrice is an extremely attractive, pretty, intelligent child; indeed,
+the most amusing baby we have had." Again--"Beatrice on her first
+birthday looks charming, with a new light-blue cap. Her table of birthday
+gifts has given her the greatest pleasure; especially a lamb."
+
+I know these are little, common domestic bits--that is just why I cull
+them out of grave letters, full of great affairs of State.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+Visiting and counter-visiting--Charming domestic gossip--The Queen's
+first grandchild--The Prince of Wales' trip to America--Another love-
+affair--Death of the Duchess of Kent.
+
+
+In May, Prince Albert ran over to Germany to visit his old home, and his
+new son, and his darling daughter, whom he found well and happy. In one
+of his letters to the Queen from Gotha, he says: "I enclose a forget-me-
+not from grandmama's grave."
+
+There is in that simple sentence an exquisite indication of his
+affectionate and constant nature. This was a hurried visit, with many
+interests and excitements, and yet the grave of that infirm, deaf, old
+Dowager Duchess, who had, as practical people say, "outlived her
+usefulness," was not found "out of the way." There was little need of the
+dear grandmama calling softly through that tender blue flower--
+"_Vergiss mein nicht, mein Engel Albert!_" He never forgot.
+
+In July, the Queen and Prince took to their yacht again, for a visit to
+the Emperor and Empress, at Cherbourg, and had a grand reception, and
+there was a great _fête_, and fireworks and bombs and rockets; but the
+account is not half so interesting to me as the one given by Her Majesty,
+of their return to Osborne; an exquisite picture that, which I feel I
+must reproduce almost entire: ... "At twenty minutes to five, we landed
+at our peaceful Osborne. ... The evening was very warm and calm. Dear
+Affie was on the pier, and we found all the other children, including
+Baby, standing at the door. Deckel (a favorite dog), and our new charming
+kennel-bred Dachs 'Boy,' also received us with joy." I like that bringing
+in of the dogs to complete the-picture.
+
+The Queen continues: "We went to see Affie's (Alfred's) table of birthday
+presents--entirely nautical. ... We went with the children, Alice and I
+driving, to the Swiss Cottage, which was all decked out with flags in
+honor of Affie's birthday. ... I sat (at dinner) between Albert and
+Affie. The two little boys (Princes Arthur and Leopold) appeared. A band
+played, and after dinner we danced, with the three boys and three girls,
+a merry country dance on the terrace."
+
+A little later, the Queen and Prince made a visit to their daughter in
+Germany. Her Majesty's description of the happy meeting is very sweet.
+"There on the platform stood our darling child, with a nosegay in her
+hand. She stepped in, and long and warm, was the embrace. ... So much to
+say and to tell and ask, yet so unaltered--looking well--quite the old
+Vicky still."
+
+From beautiful Babelsberg, she wrote: "Vicky came and sat with me. I felt
+as if she were my own again."
+
+This was not a long, but a very happy visit; the Queen and Prince had
+received many courteous attentions from the Prussian Court, and had found
+their beloved daughter proud and content. From Osborne, in a letter to
+his daughter, the Prince-Consort writes: "Alfred looks very nice and
+handsome in his new naval cadet's uniform--the round-jacket and the long-
+tailed coat, with the broad knife by his side." The next month the Prince
+went to Spithead, to see this son off on a two-years' cruise--and felt
+that his family had indeed begun to break up. The next exciting public
+matter was the news of Louis Napoleon's alliance with King Victor
+Emmanuel in the war against Austria. And this was the Emperor who, had
+given out that his empire was "peace"--that the only clang of arms
+henceforth to be heard therein would be a mighty beating of swords and
+spears into plow-shares and pruning-hooks. The next domestic excitement
+was caused by a telegram from Berlin, announcing the birth of a son to
+the Crown Prince and Princess, and that mother and child were doing well.
+Queen Victoria was a grandmother, and prouder, I doubt not, than when
+afterwards she was made Empress of India.
+
+For her mother's birthday, in May, 1859, the Crown Princess came over and
+made a delightful little visit. The Queen wrote of her: "Dear Vicky is a
+charming companion." Of the Princess Alice she had before written: "She
+is very good, sensible and amiable, and a real comfort to me." Mothers
+know how much there is in those words--"a real comfort to me." The Crown
+Princess found most change in baby--Beatrice--and after her return home,
+her father often wrote to her of this little sister: "The little aunt,"
+he says, "makes daily progress, and is really too comical. When she
+tumbles, she calls out, in bewilderment, 'She don't like it! She don't
+like it!'--and she-came into breakfast a short time ago, with her eyes
+full of tears, moaning, 'Baby has been so naughty,--poor baby so
+naughty!' as one might complain of being ill, or of having slept badly."
+Later in the year the Prince writes: "Alice comes out admirably, and is a
+great support to her mother. Lenchen (the Princess Helena) is very
+distinguished, and little Arthur amiable and full of promise as ever."
+
+In November, Prince Frederick William and his Princess came over on a
+visit--and the fond father wrote: "Vicky has developed greatly of late--
+and yet remains quite a child; of such, indeed, 'is the kingdom of
+heaven.'" Of the Prince he said: "He has quite delighted us." So all was
+right then. About this time he said of his daughter, Alice, that she had
+become "a handsome young woman, of graceful form and presence, and is a
+help and stay to us all in the house." What a rich inheritance such
+praise!
+
+In the Queen's diary there was, on July 24, 1860, an interesting entry:
+"Soon after we sat down to breakfast came a telegram from Fritz--Vicky
+had got a daughter, at 8:10, and both doing well! What joy! Children
+jumping about, every one delighted--so thankful and relieved."
+
+The Prince wrote to his daughter as only _he_ could write--wisely and
+thoughtfully, yet tenderly and brightly. There was in this letter a
+charming passage about his playfellow, Beatrice. After saying of his new
+grandchild, "The little girl must be a darling," he adds, "Little girls
+are much prettier than boys. I advise her to model herself after her Aunt
+Beatrice. That excellent lady has now not a moment to spare. 'I have no
+time,' she says, when she is asked for anything, 'I must write letters to
+my niece.'"
+
+Shortly after his first little niece was born, the Prince of Wales made
+his first acquaintance with the New World. He went over to America to
+visit the vast domain which was to be his, some day, and the vaster
+domain which might have been his, but for the blind folly of his great-
+grandfather, George III. and his Ministers, who, like the rash voyagers
+of the "Arabian Nights' Entertainment," kindled a fire on the back of a
+whale, thinking it "solid land," till the leviathan "put itself in
+motion," and flung them and their "merchandise" off into the sea. He was
+a fine young fellow, the Prince, and was received with loyal enthusiasm,
+and heartily liked in the Canadas. I believe we of the States treated him
+very well, also--and that he had what Americans call "a good time,"
+dancing with pretty girls in the Eastern cities, and shooting prairie-
+chickens on the Western plains. I think we did not overdo the matter in
+fêting and following the son of the beloved Queen of England. We had
+other business on hand just then--a momentous Presidential election--the
+election of Abraham Lincoln.
+
+In our capital he was treated to a ball, a visit to the Patent-Office and
+the tomb of Washington, and such like gaieties. President Buchanan
+entertained him as handsomely as our national palace, the White House,
+would allow; and afterwards wrote a courtly letter to Queen Victoria,
+congratulating her on the charming behavior of her son and heir--"_the
+expectancy and rose of the fair State_." The Queen replied very
+graciously and even gratefully, addressing Mr. Buchanan as "my good
+friend." That was the most she could do, according to royal rules. The
+elected temporary ruler of our great American empire, even should it
+become greater by the annexation of Cuba and Mexico, can never expect to
+be addressed as "_mon frère_" by regularly born, bred, crowned and
+anointed sovereigns--or even by a reigning Prince or Grand Duke; can
+never hope to be embraced and kissed on both cheeks by even the Prince of
+Monaco, the King of the Sandwich Islands, or the Queen of Madagascar. We
+must make up our minds to that.
+
+In the early autumn of 1860, the Queen, Prince, and Princess Alice went
+over to Germany for another sight of their dear ones. It was the last
+visit that the Queen was to pay with the Prince to his beloved
+fatherland. They were delighted with their grandson, and I hope with
+their granddaughter also. Of baby Wilhelm the Queen writes: "Such a
+little love. ... He is a fine, fat child, with a beautiful, soft white
+skin, very fine shoulders and limbs, and a very dear face. ... He has
+Fritz's eyes and Vicky's mouth, and very fair, curling hair." Afterwards
+she wrote: "Dear little William came to me, as he does every morning. He
+is such a darling, so intelligent."
+
+I believe this darling grandchild was the "little love" who gave to the
+Queen her first great-grandchild.
+
+At Coburg the Prince-Consort came frightfully near being killed by the
+running away of his carriage-horses. The accident was a great shock to
+the Queen, and the escape an unspeakable joy. At Mayence Her Majesty
+confided a family secret to her discreet diary. During a visit from the
+Prince and Princess Charles of Hesse-Darmstadt it was settled that the
+young Prince Louis should come to England to get better acquainted with
+the Princess Alice, whom he already greatly admired. So everything was
+arranged and the way smoothed for these lovers, and in this case the
+union proved as happy as though brought about in the usual hap-hazard way
+of marriages in common life.
+
+The next November the Prince wrote from Windsor: "The Prince Louis of
+Hesse is here on a visit. The young people seem to like each other. He is
+very simple, natural, frank and thoroughly manly."
+
+The next day the Queen jotted down in her diary the simple story of the
+betrothal in a way to reveal how fresh in her own heart was the romance
+of her youth:
+
+"After dinner, while talking to the gentlemen, I perceived Alice and
+Louis talking before the fireplace more earnestly than usual, and when I
+passed to go to the other room both came up to me, and Alice in much
+agitation said he had proposed to her, and he begged for my blessing. I
+could only squeeze his hand and say 'Certainly,' and that we would see
+him in my room later. Got through the evening, working as well as we
+could. Alice came to our room. ... Albert sent for Louis to his room,
+then called Alice and me in. ... Louis has a warm, noble heart. We
+embraced our dear Alice and praised her much to him. He pressed and
+kissed my hand and I embraced him." The Queen was right, as she generally
+was in her estimate of character. This son-in-law, of whom she has always
+been especially fond, is a Prince of amiable and noble disposition, good
+ability and remarkable cultivation; not exactly a second Prince Albert--
+_he_ was a century plant.
+
+At this Christmas time the Queen's two eldest sons were at home and full
+of strange stories of strange lands. Soon after, the Prince of Wales went
+to Cambridge and Prince Alfred joined his ship. Before that cruise was
+over a deeper, darker sea rolled between the sailor lad and his father.
+
+On February 9, 1861, Prince Albert wrote Baron Stockmar: "To-morrow our
+marriage will be twenty-one years old. How many storms have swept over
+it, and still it continues green and fresh." The anniversary occurring on
+Sunday was very quietly observed, chiefly by the performance in the
+evening of some fine sacred music, the appropriateness of which was
+scarcely realized at the time. In a very sweet letter to the Duchess of
+Kent, such a letter as few married men write to their mothers-in-law, the
+Prince says: ... "To-day our marriage comes of age, according to law. We
+have faithfully kept our pledge for better and for worse,' and have only
+to thank God that He has vouchsafed so much happiness to us. May He have
+us in His keeping for the days to come! You have, I trust, found good and
+loving children in us, and we have experienced nothing but love and
+kindness from you."
+
+This dear "Mama-aunt" had been in delicate health for some time, and once
+or twice seriously ill, but she seemed better, her physicians were
+encouraging and all were hopeful till the 12th of March, when the Queen
+and Prince were suddenly summoned from London to Frogmore by the news of
+a very alarming relapse. They went at once with all speed, yet the Queen
+says "the way seemed so long." When they readied the house, the Queen
+writes: "Albert went up first, and when he returned with tears in his
+eyes, I saw what awaited me. ... With a trembling heart I went up the
+staircase and entered the bedroom, and here on a sofa, supported by
+cushions, sat leaning back my beloved Mama, breathing rather heavily, but
+in her silk dressing-gown, with her cap on, looking quite herself. ... I
+knelt before her, kissed her dear hand and placed it next my cheek; but
+though she opened her eyes she did not, I think, know me. She brushed my
+hand off, and the dreadful reality was before me that for the first time,
+she did not know the child she had ever received with such tender
+smiles."
+
+The further description given by the Queen of this first great sorrow of
+her life, is exceedingly pathetic and vivid. It is the very poetry of
+grief. I cannot reproduce it entire, nor give that later story of
+incalculable loss as related by her in that diary, through which her very
+heart beats. It is all too unutterably sad. There are passages in this
+account most exquisitely natural and touching. When all was over, the
+poor daughter tried to comfort herself with thoughts of the blessed rest
+of the good mother, of the gentle spirit released from the pain-racked
+body, but the heart would cry out: "But I--I, wretched child, who had
+lost the mother I so tenderly loved, from whom for these forty-one years
+I had never been parted, except for a few weeks, what was my case? My
+childhood, everything seemed to crowd upon me at once... What I had
+dreaded and fought--off the idea of, for years, had come, and must be
+borne... Oh, if I could nave been with her these last weeks! How I grudge
+every hour I did not spend with her! ... What a blessing we went on
+Tuesday. The remembrance of her parting blessing, of her dear, sweet
+smile, will ever remain engraven on my memory."
+
+During all this time, the Queen received the most tender sympathy and
+care from her children, and Prince Albert, was--_Prince Albert_;--
+weeping with her, yet striving to comfort her, full of loving kindness
+and consideration.
+
+The Queen's grief was perhaps excessive, as her love had been beyond
+measure, but he was not impatient with it, though he writes from Osborne,
+some weeks after the funeral of the Duchess: "She (the Queen) is greatly
+upset, and feels her childhood rush back upon her memory with the most
+vivid force. Her grief is extreme... For the last two years her constant
+care and occupation have been to keep watch over her mother's comfort,
+and the influence of this upon her own character has been most salutary.
+In body she is well, though terribly nervous, and the children are a
+great disturbance to her. She remains almost entirely alone."
+
+How true to nature! When the first love of a life is suddenly uprooted,
+all the later growths, however strong, seem to have been torn up with it.
+When the mother goes, only the child seems to remain. Victoria, tender
+mother as she herself was, and adoring wife, was now the little girl of
+Kensington and Claremont, whose little bed was at the side of her
+mother's, and who had waked to find that mother's bed empty, and forever
+empty! And yet she said in her first sense of the loss: "I seemed to have
+lived through a life; to have become old."
+
+We may say that with the coming of that first sorrow went out the youth
+of the Queen; for it seems that while her mother lives, a woman is always
+young, that there is something of girlhood, of childhood even, lingering
+in her life while she can lay her tired head on her mother's knee, or
+hide her tearful face against her mother's breast, that most sweet and
+restful refuge from the trials and weariness of life.
+
+Her Majesty's sister, Feodore, strove to comfort her; the dear daughter
+Victoria came to her almost immediately; her people's tears and prayers
+were for her, and amid the quiet and seclusion of Osborne she slowly
+regained her cheerfulness; but the old gladness and content never came
+back. The children, too, with all the natural gayety of their years,
+found that something of sweetness and comfort had dropped out of life--
+something of the charm and dearness of home was gone with "grandmama,"
+from the Palace, the Castle, the seaside mansion, as well as from
+pleasant Frogmore, where they were always so welcome. Not till then,
+perhaps, had they known all she was to them--what a blessed element in
+their lives was her love, so tender and indulgent. Age is necessary to
+the family completeness. We do not even in our humbler condition, always
+realize, this--do not see how the quiet waning life in the old arm-chair
+gives dignity and serenity to the home, till the end comes--till the
+silver-haired presence is withdrawn.
+
+
+
+
+PART IV.
+
+WIDOWHOOD.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+Failing health of Prince Albert--His last visit to Balmoral--His
+influence upon the policy of England in the _Trent_ difficulty with
+the United States--Strange revolution in English sentiment in respect to
+American slavery--The setting of the sun.
+
+
+All this time while the Queen was absorbed by anxious care, or passionate
+grief for her mother, the health of the Prince-Consort was slowly but
+surely failing. The keen blade of his active mind was wearing out its
+sheath. His vital forces must have begun to give out long before actual
+illness, or he would not so easily have resigned himself to the thought
+of the long rest,--still young as he was, with so much to enjoy in life,
+and so much to do. It is said that he had premonitions of early death,
+and tried to prepare the Queen for his going first--but the realization
+of a loss so immense could not find lodgment in her mind. Yet though
+often feeling weak and languid, he did not relax his labors--spurring up
+his flagging powers. He never lost his interest in public affairs, or in
+his children's affairs of the heart. He was happy in contemplating the
+happiness of his daughter Alice, and followed with his heart the journey
+of his son, Albert Edward, in his visit to the country of the fierce old
+Vikings, to woo the daughter of a King of another sort--a Princess so
+fair and fresh that she could
+
+  --"_with lilies boast,
+  And with the half-blown rose_."
+
+That summer his daughter Victoria, with her husband (now Crown Prince)
+and their children, came again, for a long visit, and there were many
+other guests, and much was done to cheer the Queen; but her first
+birthday in orphanage was hopelessly sad, and when that of the Prince
+came round, his last--though she wrote to her uncle, "This is the dearest
+of days, and one which fills my heart with love and gratitude," she
+murmured, because her "beloved mama" was not there to wish him joy. Ah,
+what an acting, unreasoning thing is the human heart!
+
+Yet the Queen seems to have had a brief return of happiness--to have been
+upborne on a sudden tide of youthful joyance, during their autumn stay at
+Balmoral. She wrote: "Being out a good deal here and seeing new and fine
+scenery does me good." Of their last great Highland excursion, she said:
+"Have enjoyed nothing so much, or felt so much cheered by anything since
+my great sorrow."
+
+Because of this intense love of nature--not the holiday, dressed-up
+nature, of English parks, streams and lakes--but as she appears in all
+her wildness, ruggedness, raggedness and simple grandeur, in the glorious
+land of Scott and Burns, the Queen's journal, though a little clouded at
+the last, by that "great sorrow," is very pleasant, breezy reading. It
+gives one a breath of heather, and pine and peat-smoke.
+
+After coming from Balmoral, and its bracing outdoor avocations and
+amusements, the Prince-Consort's health seemed to decline again. He
+suffered from rheumatic pains and sleeplessness, and he began to feel the
+chill shadows of the valley he was nearing, creeping around him. The last
+work of his beneficent life was one of peculiar interest to Americans. It
+was the amicable arrangement, in conjunction with the Queen, of the ugly
+affair of the _Trent_. That was a trying time for Americans in England,
+unless they were of the South, southerly. We of the North, in the
+beginning of our war for the Union, found to our sad surprise that
+the sympathies of perhaps the majority of the English were on the side of
+our opponents. These very people had been ever before, so decidedly and
+ardently anti-slavery in their sentiments--had counseled such stern and
+valiant measures for the removal of our "national disgrace," that their
+new attitude amazed us. We could not understand what sort of a moral
+whirlwind it was that had caught them up, turned them round, borne them
+off and set them down on the other side of Mason and Dixon's Line. It was
+strange, but with the exception of a few such clear-headed, steadfast
+"friends of humanity" as Cobden and Bright, and such heroes as those
+glorious operatives of Lancashire, all seemed changed. Even the
+sentiments of prominent. Exeter Hall, anti-slavery philanthropists had
+suffered a secession change, "into something new and strange," especially
+after the battle of Bull Run--that fortunate calamity for us, as it
+proved. Most people here  were captivated by the splendid qualities of
+the Confederates--their gallantry, their enthusiasm, their bravery.
+Before these practical revolutionists, those "moral suasion" agitators,
+the Northern Abolitionists, made no great show. Garrison with his logic,
+Burritt with his languages, Douglas with his magnificent eloquence, were
+as naught to Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, and that soldier of the
+fine old Cromwellian type--Stonewall Jackson. The "institution" was
+pronounced in Parliament "not so bad a thing, after all," and the
+pathetic "Am-I-not-a-Man-and-a-Brother" of Clarkson, became the Sambo of
+Christie and the "Quashee" of Carlyle. In the midst of this ill-feeling
+on one side, and sore-feeling on the other, the rash act of a U. S. Naval
+Officer, in boarding the British steamer _Trent_ and seizing the
+Confederate Envoys, Mason and Slidell, gave England cause, had our
+Government endorsed that act, for open hostility. So ready, so eager did
+the English Government seem for a war with America, that it did not wait
+for an apology, before making extensive military preparations. With that
+brave but cool-headed Captain on our Ship of State, Abraham Lincoln, and
+that prudent helmsman, William H. Seward, we could not easily have been
+driven into a war with England at this time; but we might have been
+humiliated even more than we were, by the peremptory demands of Lord
+Palmerston--might have been obliged to eat a piece of "humble pie," so
+big, hot, and heavy, that it would have remained undigested to this day--
+had it not been for the prudence, the courtesy, good sense, and admirable
+tact of the Queen and Prince-Consort in modifying and softening the tone
+of that important State paper, the demand for an official apology, and
+the liberation of the Confederate Envoys. It is for this that Americans
+of the North, and I believe of the South, love Queen Victoria, and not
+alone for her sake, bless the memory of "Albert the Good."
+
+I know of nothing in literature so exquisite in its pathos and childlike
+simplicity, as the Queen's own account, in the diary kept faithfully at
+the time, of the last illness of the Prince-Consort. In it we see the
+very beatings of her heart, in its hope and fear, love and agony--can
+mark all the stages of the sacred passion of her sorrow. It is a
+wonderful psychological study.
+
+That illness in its serious phases, lasted about two weeks. It was a low,
+slow fever, which at first was not recognized as fever at all, but only a
+heavy cold. I have been told that the Prince himself had from the first,
+an impression that he should not recover, and that he talked of his
+probable death very calmly with his noble daughter Alice, saying: "Your
+mother cannot bear to hear me speak of it yet." The Queen, though very
+restless and distressed, and at times shaken with wild alarms, could not
+face the coming calamity; could not admit the possibility that the sands
+of that precious life--golden sands, were running out. The alternations
+of hope and fear, must have been terrible. One morning the Queen records
+that on going to the Prince she found him looking very wretched: "He did
+not smile, or take much notice of me. His manner all along was so unlike
+himself, and he had sometimes, such a strange, wild look." In the evening
+she writes: "I found my Albert most dear and affectionate and quite
+himself, when I went in with little Beatrice, whom he kissed. He laughed
+at some of her new French verses which I made her repeat, then he. held
+her little hand in his for some time, and she stood looking, at him."
+
+For several days he wished to be read to, and the Queen and faithful
+Alice read his favorite authors; he also asked for music, and Alice
+played for him some fine German airs. He even wished often to look at a
+favorite picture, one of Raphael's Madonnas, saying, "It helps me through
+the day."
+
+At length the fever took on a typhoid form, congestion of the lungs set
+in, and there was no longer reason for hope,--though they did hope, till
+almost the last hour. Now, it seems that from the first, even when he did
+not apparently suffer, except from mortal weariness, there were little
+fatal indications. One morning he told the Queen that as he lay awake he
+heard the little birds outside, and "thought of those he used to hear at
+the Rosenau, in his childhood"; and on the last morning the Queen writes
+that he "began arranging his hair just as he used to do when well and he
+was dressing."
+
+It seemed to the poor Queen as though he were "preparing for another and
+a greater journey" than they had ever taken together. His tenderness
+towards her through all this sad fortnight, was very touching. It was not
+calculated to loosen the detaining, clinging clasp of her arms; but it
+must be very sweet for her to remember. After the weariness of watching,
+the prostration of fever, he welcomed always the good-morning caress of
+his "dear little wife." Through the gathering mists of unconsciousness,
+through the phantom-shades of delirium, his love for her struggled forth,
+in a tender word, a wistful look, a languid smile, a feeble stroking of
+the cheek. It was "wondrous pitiful," but it was very beautiful. Even at
+the last, when he knew no one else, he knew her; and when she bent over
+him and whispered, "Tis your own little wife," he bowed his head and
+kissed her.
+
+After she knew that all hope must be given up, the Queen still was able
+to sit calmly by his bedside, and not trouble with the sound of weeping
+the peace of that loving, passing soul. Occasionally she felt that she
+must leave the room and weep, or her suppressed grief would kill her. But
+she counted the moments and stayed her soul with prayer, to go back to
+her post.
+
+It was on the night of December 14, 1861, that the beloved Prince-Consort
+passed away,--quietly and apparently painlessly, from the station he had
+ennobled, from the home he had blessed. Unconsciously he drifted out on
+the unknown, mysterious sea, nor knew that loving feet followed him to
+the strand, and that after him were stretched yearning arms.
+
+That death-bed scene passed in a solemn hush, more mournful than any
+outcry of passionate grief could be. On one side, knelt the Queen,
+holding her husband's hand, trying to warm it with kisses and tears; on
+the other, knelt the Princess Alice. At the foot of the bed, the Prince
+of Wales and the Princess Helena were kneeling together. It is probable
+that all the younger children were sleeping in quiet unconsciousness of
+the presence of the dread angel in the Castle. The Dean of Windsor,
+Prince Ernest Leiningen,--secretaries, physicians and attached attendants
+were grouped around. All was silent, save that low, labored breathing,
+growing softer and softer, and more infrequent, and then--it ceased
+forever.
+
+I have been told by a lady who had had good opportunities of knowing
+about the sad circumstances of that death, that the Queen retained
+perfect possession of herself to the last, and that after the lids had
+been pressed down over the dear eyes whose light had passed on, she rose
+calmly, and courteously thanked the physicians in attendance, saying that
+she knew that everything which human skill and devotion could accomplish,
+had been done for her husband, whom God had taken. Then she walked out of
+the death-chamber, erect,--still the Queen, wearing "sorrow's crown of
+sorrow," and went to her chamber, and shut herself in--her soul alone
+with God, her heart alone for evermore.
+
+Ah, we may not doubt that this royal being, in whose veins beats the
+blood of a long, long race of Kings, was brought low enough then,--to her
+knees, to her face,
+
+  "_For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop_."
+
+So absorbing and unwavering had been the love of the Queen for her
+husband, who to her, was "nobler than the noblest"; such a proud homage
+of the soul had there been--such a dear habit of the heart, in one with
+whom habit counted for much, that her people were filled with the most
+intense anxiety on her behalf. They feared that this cruel stroke which
+lopped off the best part of her life, would kill her, or plunge her into
+a depth of melancholy, sadder than death. For some time she was not able
+to sleep. The thought of that chamber, so lately the scene of all the
+anxious activity of the sickroom, wherein softly moved troubled
+physicians and nurses, tearful attendants and awe-struck children, but
+where now there were shadowed lights, and solemn silence, and where lay
+that beautiful, marble-like shape, so familiar, yet so strange--that
+_something_ which was not _he_, yet was inexpressibly dear, kept her
+awake, face to face with her sorrow,--and when at last, the bulletin from
+Windsor announced, "The Queen has had some hours' sleep," her people all
+in mourning as they were, felt like ringing joy-bells.
+
+The friend from whom I have before quoted, Mrs. Crosland, a most loyal
+lady, wrote on this text a very sweet poem, from which I am tempted to
+give a few verses:
+
+  "Sleep, far the night is round thee spread,
+    Thou daughter of a line of kings;
+    Sleep, widowed Queen, white angels' wings
+  Make canopy above thy head!
+
+  "Sleep, while a million prayers rise up
+    To Him who knew all earthly sorrow,
+    That day by day, each soft to-morrow
+  May melt the bitter from thy cup.
+
+ .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .
+
+  "Long life ask for thee, dear Queen,
+    And moonlight peace, since joy is set.
+    And Time's soft touch on dark regret.
+  And memories calm of what has been!
+
+  "Long life for thee--for our best sake.
+    To be our stay 'mid hopes and fears.
+    Through many far-off future years,
+  Till thou by Albert's side shall wake!"
+
+It seems Her Majesty could not bear the thought of her beloved Albert,
+whose nature was so bright and joyous, and beauty-loving, resting amid
+the darkness and heavy silence and "cold obstruction" of the royal vault;
+so, as early as the 18th of December, she drove with the Princess Alice
+to Frogmore, where they were-received by the Prince of Wales, Prince
+Louis of Hesse, and several officers of the Royal Household. Then,
+leaning on the arm of her noble daughter, the Queen walked about the
+pleasant gardens, till she fixed upon the spot, where now stands the
+magnificent mausoleum, which, splendid and beautiful as art can make it,
+is like a costly casket, for the dust, infinitely more precious to her
+than all the jewels of her crown. It was sweet for her to feel that thus
+under the shadow of her mother's dear home, the two most sacred loves and
+sorrows of her life would be forever associated.
+
+There was great and sincere mourning in England among all classes, not
+alone for the Queen's sake, but for their own, for the Prince-Consort had
+finally endeared himself to this too long jealous and distrustful people.
+They had named him "alien," at first; they called him "angel," at last.
+He was not _that_, but a most rare man, of a nature so sweet and
+wholesome, of a character so well-balanced and symmetrical, of a life so
+pure and blameless, that the English cannot reasonably hope to "look upon
+his like again," not even among his own sons.
+
+Some of his contemporaries, while admitting his grace and elegance, were
+blind to his strength of character, forgetting that a shining column of
+the Parthenon may be as strong as one of the dark rough-hewn columns of
+Pæstum. Morally, I believe, the Prince-Consort stands alone in English
+royal history. What other youth of twenty-one, graceful, beautiful and
+accomplished, has ever forborne what he forbore?--Ever fought such a good
+fight against temptations manifold? He was the Sir Galahad of Princes.
+Being human, he must have been tempted,--if not to a life of sybaritic
+pleasure, to one of ease, through his delicate organization,--and,
+through his refined tastes, to one of purely artistic and esthetic
+culture, which for him, where he was, would have been but splendid
+selfishness.
+
+Though my estimate of the Prince-Consort is based on his own good words
+and works, to which I have paid tribute of sincerest praise, it is
+strengthened and justified by a knowledge of the loving reverence in
+which his name is held to this day, by the English people of the better
+class, who honor the Queen for her love stronger than death, and love her
+the better for it; for I hold,
+
+        ----"the soul must cast
+  All weakness from it, all vain strife,
+  And tread God's ways through this sad life,
+  To be thus grandly mourned at last."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+The Twilight Life after--Marriage of the Princess Alice--Incidents of the
+Queen's life at Balmoral--John Brown--A letter from the Queen to the
+Duchess of Sutherland.
+
+
+"There is no one near me to call me 'Victoria' now!" is said to have been
+the desolate cry of the Queen, when, on waking from that first sleep, the
+cruel morning light, smote upon her with a full consciousness of her
+bereavement, and a new sense of her royal isolation. She was on a height
+where the storm beat fiercest and there was the least shelter. Her sacred
+grief was the business of the world;--she could not long shut herself up
+with it, and fold her hands in "blameless idleness"; but as the widowed
+mother and housekeeper in humble life struggles up from the great stroke,
+and staggers on, resolutely driving back the tears which "hinder needle
+and thread," and choking down her sobs, to go wearily about her household
+tasks,--so Victoria, after a little time, rose trembling to her feet, and
+went through with such imperative State duties as could be delegated to
+no one. To a near friend, who expressed joy to find her more calm than at
+the time of her mother's death, she said simply, "I have had God's
+teaching, and learned to bear all He lays upon me."
+
+There is a record by Lord Beaconsfield of her faithful discharge of such
+duties a few years later; but what was true of her then, was almost as
+true an account of the routine of her official life, during a large part
+of the first years of her widowhood. In a public speech, Beaconsfield
+said: "There is not a dispatch received from abroad, or sent from this
+country abroad, which is not submitted to the Queen. The whole of the
+internal administration of this country greatly depends upon the sign-
+manual of our Sovereign, and it may be said that her signature has never
+been placed to any public document of which she did not know the purpose
+and of which she did not approve. Those cabinet councils of which you all
+hear, and which are necessarily the scene of anxious and important
+deliberation, are reported, on their termination, by the Minister to the
+Sovereign, and they often call from her critical remarks requiring
+considerable attention; and I will venture to say that no person likely
+to administer the affairs of this country would be likely to treat the
+suggestions of Her Majesty with indifference, for at this moment there is
+probably no person living who has such complete control over the
+political condition of England as the Sovereign herself."
+
+I have come upon few incidents of that first sad year. The Princess Alice
+was married very quietly at Osborne, and went away to her German home,
+where she lived for seventeen happy years, a noble and beneficent life.
+In character she was very like her father--to whose soul hers was so
+knit, that, when in her last illness, the anniversary of his death came
+round, she seemed to hear his call, and went to him at once in child-
+like obedience. She took that fatal illness--the diphtheria--from a dear
+child in a kiss, "the kiss of death," as Lord Beaconsfield called it.
+
+The Rev. Norman McLeod has left a record of the widowed Queen's first
+visit to Balmoral. It seems he thought she was too unreconciled to her
+loss, and felt it his duty to preach what he believed to be "truth in
+God's sight, and that which I believe she needed," he said, "though I
+felt it would be very trying for her to receive it." She did receive it
+very sweetly, and wrote him "a kind, tender letter of thanks for it," She
+afterwards summoned him to the castle, and to her own room. He writes:
+"She was alone. She met me with an unutterably sad expression, which
+filled my eyes with tears, and at once began to speak about the Prince.
+... She spoke of his excellencies--his love, his cheerfulness; how he was
+everything to her. She said she never shut her eyes to trials, but liked
+to look them in the face; how she would never shrink from duty, but that
+all was at present done mechanically; that her highest ideas of purity
+and love were obtained from him, and that God could not be displeased
+with her love."
+
+No, we cannot love enough to displease the God of love, who is not,
+whatever men may preach, a "jealous God," in that small way; but perhaps
+we may grieve too much to please the Master of Life, of which, in His
+eyes, what we call death, is the immortal blossom and crowning.
+
+It seems to me that in her loving tribute to the Prince, the Queen was a
+little unjust to her mother, to whose precepts and example she owed very
+high "ideas of purity" and that strong sense of duty, and that fortitude,
+essentially a womanly, not a manly, virtue, which preserved her through
+the temptations of a glad and splendid youth--through the trials and
+sorrows of maturer years, and which, when that time of bitterest trial
+came, braced up her shattered forces, and held together her broken heart.
+
+Balmoral--the dear mountain-home, so entirely her husband's creation--now
+became more than ever dear to the Queen, and has never lost its charm for
+her. Her life there has been, from the first, almost pastoral in its
+simplicity.
+
+The Highlanders about them, a primitive, but very proud people, regarded
+their Sovereign and her husband with no servile awe. With them, even
+respect begins, like charity, at home; what there is left, they give
+loyally to their superiors in rank. To the Queen and her family they have
+given more,--love and free-hearted devotion. Her Majesty has always gone
+about among the poorer tenants of the estate, like any laird's wife, in
+an unpretending, neighborly way; and they, thanks to their good Scotch
+sense and Highland pride, never take advantage of the uncondescending
+condescension, to offend her by too great familiarity, or shock her by
+servility. Taking up her "Journal," I have chanced upon an account given
+by Her Majesty of a round of visits to the cottages of certain "poor old
+women," and here is an entry or two:
+
+"Before we went into any, we met a woman who was very poor, and eighty-
+eight years old. I gave her a warm petticoat, and the tears rolled down
+her old cheeks, and she shook my hands and prayed God to bless me: it was
+very touching.
+
+"I went into a small cabin of old Kitty Kear's, who is eighty-six years
+old, quite-erect, and who welcomed us with a great air of dignity. She
+sat down and spun. I gave her, also, a warm petticoat. She said, 'May the
+Lord ever attend ye and yours, here and hereafter; and may the Lord be a
+guide to ye, and keep ye fra all harm.'"
+
+Now, some readers, whose ideas of royal charities are derived from the
+kings and queens of melodrama, who fling about golden largess, or "chuck"
+plethoric purses at their poor subjects, may be amused at these entries
+in a great Queen's journal, but "let them laugh who win"--the flannel
+petticoats.
+
+During a later visit to the widowed Queen at Balmoral, Dr. McLeod writes:
+"After dinner, the Queen invited me to her room, where I found the
+Princess Helena and the Marchioness of Ely. The Queen sat down to spin on
+a fine Scotch wheel, while I read Burns to her--'_Tam O'Shanter_,' and
+'_A Man's a Man for a' That_'--her favorites."
+
+In the Queen's book I find frequent pleasant mention of the young
+Highlander, John Brown--a favorite personal attendant, first of Prince
+Albert, and afterwards of Her Majesty.
+
+She had the misfortune to lose this "good and faithful servant," in the
+early part of this year. In a foot-note in her "Journal," she paid a
+grateful tribute to his "attention, care and faithfulness"--to his rare
+devotion to her, especially during a period of physical weakness and
+nervous prostration, when such service as his was invaluable. She also
+says of him, "He has all the independence and elevation of feeling
+peculiar to the Highland race, and is singularly straightforward, simple-
+minded, kind-hearted and disinterested."
+
+If there is something touching in the nearly life-long service and
+devotion of the Highlander, almost always seen so close behind his Liege
+Lady, when she appeared in public, that he was named "the Queen's
+shadow"--there is something admirable in her grateful appreciation of
+that service, in her frank acknowledgment of all she has owed of comfort,
+in a constant sense of security, to this man's steadfast faithfulness;
+and now that the "shadow" has gone before, I hold it is only fitting and
+loyal in her to acknowledge for him, as she does, "friendship," and even
+"affection"--not only to lay flowers on his grave, but to pay more
+enduring tribute to his honest memory. He was a Highland gillie, of
+simple Highland ways and words but "_A man's a man for a' that._" If
+Byron could nurse his dying dog, _Boatswain_, and erect a monument to his
+memory, and not lose, but gain, our respect by so doing, we surely might
+let pass, unquestioned, the Queen's grief for a faithful human creature--
+for thirty-four years devoted to her--ever at her call--looking up to
+her, yet watching over her; a friend, whose humble good sense and canny
+bits of counsel must often, in the simpler, yet not simple, affairs of
+her complex life, be sorely missed.
+
+That is how it strikes an American, of democratic tendencies.
+
+About a year after the death of Prince Albert, the Duchess of Sutherland
+presented to the Queen a richly-bound Bible, the offering of loyal
+"English widows."
+
+In her letter of acknowledgment, Her Majesty gives very strong and clear
+expression to her faith, not only in the happy continued existence of her
+beloved husband, but in his "unseen presence" with her--a faith which she
+has often expressed. The letter runs thus:
+
+"MY DEAREST DUCHESS:--I am deeply touched by the gift of a Bible 'from
+many widows,' and by the very kind and affectionate address which
+accompanied it. ... Pray express to all these kind sister-widows the deep
+and heartfelt gratitude of their widowed Queen, who can never feel
+grateful enough for the universal sympathy she has received, and
+continues to receive, from her loyal and devoted subjects. But what she
+values far more is their appreciation of her adored and perfect husband.
+To her, the only sort of consolation she experiences is in the constant
+sense of his unseen presence and the blessed thought of the Eternal Union
+hereafter, which will make the bitter anguish of the present appear as
+naught. That our Heavenly Father may impart to 'many widows' those
+sources of consolation and support, is their broken-hearted Queen's
+earnest prayer ... Believe me ever yours most affectionately, VICTORIA."
+
+Dean Stanley is reported as telling of a touching little circumstance
+which he received from the Princess Hohenlohe (Feodore), from which it
+seems that Her Majesty was for a long time in the habit of going every
+morning to look at the cows on Prince Albert's model farm, because
+"_he_ had been used to do so," feeling, perhaps, that the gentle
+creatures might miss him--that somewhere in their big dull brains, they
+might wonder where their friend could be, and why he did not come. The
+Princess also said that her poor sister found her only comfort in the
+belief that her husband's spirit was close beside her--for he had
+promised her that it should be so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+Arrival in England of the Princess Alexandra to wed the Prince of Wales--
+Garibaldi's visit to London--The Queen's first public appearance after
+her widowhood--Marriage of the Princess Louise--Illness of the Prince of
+Wales--Disaffection in Ireland--The Queen's sympathy during the illness
+of President Garfield.
+
+
+On the 7th of March, 1863, all London and nearly all England went mad
+over the coming of the Princess Alexandra, from Denmark, to wed the
+Prince of Wales. Lord Ronald Gower, a son of the beautiful Duchess of
+Sutherland, gives in his "Reminiscences" a fine description of her
+arrival in London, and of the wedding at Windsor three days after. He
+says: "Probably since the day in Paris when Marie Antoinette was
+acclaimed in the gardens of the Tuileries, no Princess ever had so
+enthusiastic a reception, or so quickly won the hearts of thousands by
+the mere charm of her presence." This writer gives a very vivid
+description of the crowd which waited patiently for hours, of a cold,
+wretched day, for the sight of that sweet face whose sweetness has never
+yet cloyed upon them. At last, there came a small company of Life Guards,
+escorting an open carriage-and-four, containing the young Danish Princess
+and His Royal Highness Albert Edward, looking very happy and very
+conscious. The smiling, blushing, appealing face of the Princess warmed
+as well as won all hearts. There were few flowers at that season to
+scatter on her way, except flowers of poetry, of which there was no jack.
+Tennyson's pretty ode has not been forgotten, but all as noble and sweet
+was the greeting of her from whom I have before quoted; Mrs. Crosland.
+The most touching, though not the strongest verse in that poem, is this:
+
+  "She comes another child to be
+    To that Crowned Widow of the land,
+  Whose sceptre weighs more heavily
+    Since One has ceased to hold her hand."
+
+The Queen did not feel herself equal to taking any part in the marriage
+ceremony, but looked down upon the scene of grandeur and gayety from the
+Royal Gallery of St George's Chapel. The Duchess of Sutherland attended
+her then for the last time. She had been with her at her coronation and
+marriage; to-day they were both widows, and must have been at the moment
+living intensely and sorrowfully in the past. With the exception of the
+Crown Princess of Germany and the Duke of Edinburgh, all the Queen's
+children, down to little Beatrice, were present. The bride, it is stated,
+"looked lovely; she did not raise her eyes once in going into, and but
+little in going out of, the Chapel on her husband's arm."
+
+This first daughter-in-law soon made a place for herself in the Queen's
+heart, by her grace and amiability. I have heard a pretty little story of
+an attempt of hers to lighten somewhat Her Majesty's heavy cloud of
+mourning. Millinery being one of her accomplishments, she prevailed upon
+the Queen to let her remodel her bonnet, which she did, principally by
+removing a small basketful of sombre weeds. The Queen saw through her
+little _ruse_ and shook her head mournfully,--but wore the bonnet.
+
+The next year London went still more mad over Garibaldi. His enthusiastic
+admirers almost mobbed Stafford House, at which he was entertained by the
+young Duke of Sutherland Lord Ronald Gower describes that memorable visit
+and the popular excitement very vividly.
+
+The Italian hero entered that beautiful palace, where a grand company of
+the nobility were waiting to receive him, attired in a rough gray
+overcoat and trousers, a large pork-pie hat, a loose black neck-tie, and
+a red flannel shirt. This he never changed--I mean his style of dress,
+not the shirt--but Garibaldi would have been quite un-Garibaldi-ed in an
+English evening suit. Lord Ronald Gower writes that his noble, liberty-
+loving mother was very devoted to their guest, but does not add that by
+so doing she shocked the sensibilities of footmen and housemaids. One of
+the latter once told to another guest, a moving story of the strange
+habits of "Italian brigand": "Why, marm," she said, "he was such a
+common-looking person, and he would get up so awful early and go hobbling
+about in the garden. One morning at six o'clock, I looked out of my
+window, and there he was walking up and down, and the Duchess with him--
+_my_ Duchess, walking and talking with the likes of him!"
+
+The first public appearance of the widowed Queen was at the opening of
+Parliament, in 1866. I do not know whether the splendid chair of State
+she had provided for Prince Albert, in the happy old time, had been left
+in its place, to smite her eyes with its gilding and her heart with its
+emptiness; I do not know whether its presence or its absence would have
+grieved her most; but every sorrowing widow knows what it is to look on
+her husband's vacant chair. It does not matter whether it is made of
+rude, unpainted wood and woven rushes, or is a golden and velvet-
+cushioned chair of State,--it was _his_ seat, and he is gone! Queen
+Victoria must have felt that day, in her lonely grandeur, like crying out
+with Constance,
+
+  "_Here I and Sorrow sit. _"
+
+Lady Bloomfield gives a very touching account of her first visit to the
+widowed mistress, whom, nearly twenty years before, she had so gladly and
+proudly served--for true service is in the spirit, though the act may be
+limited to taking a part in a duet, or handing the daily bouquet. She
+wrote: "The Queen is dreadfully changed--most sad, but with the gentlest,
+most benevolent smile. Even when the tears rolled down her cheeks, she
+tried to smile." I think it was about this time that the Queen presented
+to our George Peabody her portrait, expressly painted for him, in
+recognition of his more than princely munificence in the gift of model
+lodging-houses to the London poor. It was a small portrait--enameled, I
+believe. I do not think it was an idealized picture, though the pencil
+was evidently guided by a delicate and reverential loyalty, "doing its
+spiriting gently," in marking the tracings of time and sorrow. In a
+description which I wrote at the tune of its exhibition in Philadelphia,
+I said: "With the exception of a touching expression of habitual sadness,
+this face is very like the one I looked down upon from the gallery of the
+House of Lords fifteen years ago. There is the same roundness of outline,
+only 'a little more so'--almost the same freshness of tints in the fair
+complexion. The soft brown hair is unchanged in color, if somewhat
+thinner; and the clear blue eyes have the same steady outlook. The whole
+figure is marked by a sort of regal rigidity. The face, if not positively
+unhappy in expression, is quite empty of happiness. There is about it an
+atmosphere of lonely state and absolute widowhood. The Mary Stuart cap is
+very becoming to Her Majesty, but the black dress mars the picturesque
+effect of the portrait. The neck and arms have all the roundness of
+youth, and are exquisitely painted. I remember hearing the late Mr.
+Gibson, who made several statues of the Queen, say that loyalty itself
+need not to flatter her arms or bust; in sculpture or painting, as they
+were really remarkably beautiful."
+
+In 1868 the Queen had the misfortune to lose her "dearest Duchess"--that
+grandest daughter of the grand house of Howard, _the_ Duchess of
+Sutherland. She floated all unconsciously out on the waves that wash
+against the restful palm-crowned shore, her last words being, "I think I
+shall sleep now--I am so tired."
+
+The Princess Louise was married with really royal pomp and a brave
+attempt at the old gayety, in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, in March,
+1871, to the Marquis of Lome.
+
+The bride, who, according to Lord Ronald Gower, was. "very pale, but
+handsome as she always is," was accompanied by the Prince of Wales; her
+uncle, the Grand Duke of Coburg; and, to the great joy of all the
+assembly, by her mother, the Queen. The wedded pair went to Claremont for
+their honeymoon. As they drove away, "rice and white satin slippers were
+sent after them, and John Brown threw a new broom, Highland fashion."
+
+The people were much comforted at this appearance of the Queen once more
+in the great gay world. They had begun to think that her social seclusion
+would never end. When she went down into the "valley of the shadow of
+death" with her beloved, though she struggled bravely up alone, she
+brought the shadow with her; it enveloped her and wrapped her away from
+her subjects--even the most loving and sympathetic. Now they took heart,
+believing that royalty was finally coming out from under its eclipse of
+mourning, that the Court would be re-established in Buckingham Palace,
+and things generally, go on as in the good old days. They never did,
+however, and never will, under her reign. It is too much to ask of her,
+it seems.
+
+Whether it is true, as I hear, that the air of London is hurtful to her,
+giving her severe headaches, or that the scenes of her childhood and
+early queenhood, and of her marriage, are too much for her, and heart-
+ache is the matter, I know not; but it is undeniable that the Queen
+prefers any one of her other homes to Buckingham Palace. She only comes
+to it when absolute compelled by the duties of State. It is hard for
+London tradesmen and pleasure-seekers, who think Her Majesty's mourning
+immoderate, and doubt whether their wives would fret so long for them;
+but when, in the first year of her, reign, the pretty, wilful Victoria
+said to Lord Melbourne: "What is the use of being a Queen if one cannot
+do as one likes!" her people laughed and applauded. Surely, with years
+and trouble, and much faithful care and labor, and has not lost the right
+to have a mind of her own, or the will to maintain it.
+
+Of late years I have seen Her Majesty some half dozen times; once on her
+way to prorogue Parliament, seated in the grand State coach, drawn by the
+superb, cream-colored State horses, in all imaginable splendor of
+trappings--escorted by the dashing Life Guards, and all the royal
+carriages, each with its resplendent coachman and footmen, most gorgeous
+of human creatures, and inside, very nice and respectable-looking people,
+with no particular air of pride or elation. The Queen wore a cloak of
+ermine, a tiara of diamonds, and a long, cloud-like veil of tulle,
+floating back from her face, which that day had a very pleasant, genial
+expression. She is changed,--of course she is; but she has even more of
+the old calm dignity, and when she smiles, the effect is magical; her
+youth flashes over her face, and quite the old look--the look _he_
+knew her by, comes back for a little while.
+
+At other times I have had glimpses of her as her carriage dashed through
+the gateway to Marlborough House, on a garden-party day, or through the
+Park, as she was fleeing with all speed from the city, after a Drawing-
+room. Sometimes, she has bowed right and left, and smiled, as though
+pleased by the cheers of the people; but at other times she has scarcely
+inclined her head, and worn a look of unsmiling, utter weariness--proving
+that a woman may have much worldly goods, many jewels, and brave velvet
+gowns, and heaps of India shawls, and half a dozen grand mansions, with a
+throne in every one, and yet at times feel that this brief life of ours
+is "all vanity and vexation of spirit."
+
+The Queen, though she had not kept up her intimate relations with the
+Emperor and Empress, was shocked at the utter ruin to them and their son,
+which resulted from the French and Prussian war, and she was not wanting
+in tender sympathy, when the poor frightened refugee, Eugenie, hid a
+tearful face against her sisterly breast, and sobbed out, "I have been
+too favorable to war." To the Emperor she granted an asylum and a grave.
+
+I know not whether France will ever demand his dust, to give it sepulture
+under the dome of the Invalides; but he has already on the banks of the
+Seine the grandest of monuments--_Paris_. His memory stands fair and
+firm in stately buildings and massive bridges, and is renewed every year
+in the plane tree of noble Boulevards, those green _longas vias_,
+grander than the military highways of the Caesars.
+
+In 1867 the Prince of Wales fell grievously ill, with the same fearful
+malady that had deprived him of his father. Intense was the anxiety not
+only of the Royal Family, but of all the English people the world over.
+Soon the sympathy of other nations was aroused, and prayers began to
+ascend to Heaven for the preservation of that precious life, not only
+from all Christian peoples, but from Hebrews, Mohammedans and Buddhists;
+in heathen lands the missionaries prayed, and in heathen portions of
+Christian cities the mission-children prayed, while on the high seas the
+sailors responded fervently when the captain. read in the Service the
+"Prayer for the Sick," meaning their Prince, "sick unto death." The fine
+old boast of England's power, that "her morning drum beats round the
+world," how poor it seems beside the thought, of this zone of prayer!
+There had been nothing like this in English history, and there was
+nothing like it in ours, till that heart-breaking time of the mortal
+illness of President Garfield. O, worthy should be, the life and manifold
+the good works of that man for whom so many peoples and tongues have
+given surety to Heaven by fervent intercessions and supplications.
+
+This long sad time of anxiety and peril drew the Queen out of her sorrow
+as nothing had done before. She watched tenderly by the bedside of her
+son, and when he was recovered, and went to St. Paul's to return thanks,
+she sat by his side, and wore a white flower in her bonnet, and her
+grateful smile showed that there was a rift in the cloud of her mourning,
+and that God's sunlight was striking through.
+
+Lord Ronald Gower quotes a letter from his sister, the Duchess of
+Westminster, describing the Prince and Princess of Wales as she saw them
+about this time. She said: "He is much thinner and his head shaved, but
+little changed in his face, and looking so grateful. She looks thin and
+worn, but so affectionate--tears in her eyes when talking of him, and his
+manner to her so gentle."
+
+Surely convalescence is a "state of grace." Would that it might always
+last a lifetime with us!
+
+During this year, Irish disaffection broke out very seriously in the
+great Fenian movement. An upheaval this, from the lowest stratum of
+society, with no gentlemen, or eloquent orators, for leaders, but all the
+more appalling for that. These rough, desperate men meant, as they said,
+"business." This movement <was suppressed, driven under the surface, but
+only to break out more appallingly than ever some ten or twelve years
+later, in brutal assassinations, which have curdled the blood of the
+world. Ah, must it always be so? Will this tiresome old Celtic Enceladus
+never lie quiet, and be dead, though the mountain sit upon him ever so
+solidly, and smoke ever so placidly above him?
+
+Where now, we sadly ask, is the Ireland of Tom Moore, Father Prout, Lover
+and Lever? Not enough left of it to furnish a new drama for Mr.
+Boucicault. Donnybrook Fair has given place to midnight conspirations.
+Fox-hunts to the stalking of landlords--all the jolly old customs
+extinct, except the "wake." Peasant-life, over there, sometimes seems, at
+the best, one protracted "wake."
+
+I suppose it is too late now, yet I can but think that if the Queen had
+built years ago, a palace in Ireland, at Killarney, or in lovely Wicklow,
+or in Dublin itself, and resided there a part of every year, things might
+have been better. She was so popular in that "distressful country" when,
+by frequent visits, she testified an interest in it, and her gentle,
+motherly presence might have had a more placating influence than any
+"Coercion bill." The money she would have spent there,--the very crumbs
+that would have fallen from her table, would have been a benefaction to
+that poor people.
+
+The Fenian drama had its ghastly closing _tableau_ in the hanging of
+the ringleaders, and the explosion at Clerkenwell. The hanging of those
+Fenians must have been about the last of that sort of a public
+entertainment, as a law was soon passed making all future executions
+strictly private. Among a certain class of Her Majesty's subjects this
+was a most unpopular measure. Pot-house politicians and gin-palace
+courtiers, both ladies and gentlemen, discussed it hotly and denounced it
+sternly, as an infringement on the sacred immemorial rights of British
+freemen and a blow to the British Constitution.
+
+In 1874 Mr. Disraeli had become Prime Minister. He died in 1880--Lord
+Beaconsfield, sincerely lamented by the Queen, who was much attached to
+him as a friend, and greatly admired him as a man of genius. He was a
+brilliant novelist and a famous statesman; but the best things I know of
+him are the tender love and manly gratitude he always testified towards
+his devoted wife, and his pathetic mourning for her loss. He might have
+adopted for her tombstone the quaint, terse epitaph of an American
+husband--"Think what a wife should be, and she was that."
+
+Through his means, the title of "Empress of India" was conferred on the
+Queen by act of Parliament. Some English people opposed it as
+superfluous, a sort of anti-climax of dignity, as "gilding the refined
+gold" of English Sovereignty with baser metal, as "painting the lily" of
+the noblest of English royal titles with India-ink; but it did no harm.
+It did not hurt the Radicals and it pleased the Rajahs.
+
+Then came the Zulu war, with its awful disasters in the inglorious
+slaughter of some thousands of gallant young soldiers, among which,
+because of the power of romantic, historic associations, the death of the
+young Prince Imperial stands out in woful relief. This was a severe
+personal shock to the Queen. With all her tender sympathy she tried to
+console the inconsolable Empress, and with her sons paid funeral honors
+to the memory of the Prince, who had been almost as one of her family.
+The only time I ever saw him he was in their company, driving away from a
+royal garden-party.
+
+The Prince of Wales visited India, traveled and hunted extensively, was
+fêted after the most gorgeous Oriental style, and brought home rich
+presents enough to set up a grand Eastern bazaar in Marlborough House,
+and animals enough to start a respectable menagerie. Everywhere he went
+he inclined the hearts of the people to peace and loyalty, by his frank
+and genial ways. Does His Royal Highness ever propose such a tour in
+Ireland? He would not probably receive as tribute so much jewelry and
+gorgeous merchandise--so many tigers, pythons and other little things;
+but there is a fine chance for giving over there, and we read: "It is
+more blessed to give, than to receive."
+
+I come now to that period of our national history with which the Queen of
+England so kindly, so "gently and humanly" associated herself--I mean the
+illness and death of President Garfield. To this day, that association is
+a drop of sweetness in the bitter cup of our sorrow and humiliation. From
+the 2d of July, 1881, the date of her first telegram of anxious inquiry
+addressed to our Minister, to the 27th of the following September, when
+she telegraphed her tender solicitude as to the condition of "the late
+President's mother," not a week went by that she did not send to Mr.
+Lowell sympathetic messages, asking for the latest news--congratulating
+or condoling, as the state of "the world's patient" fluctuated between
+life and death--and when all was over, she at once telegraphed directly
+to Mrs. Garfield in these words of tenderest commiseration, so worthy of
+her great heart:
+
+"Words cannot express the deep sympathy I feel with you at this terrible
+moment. May God support and comfort you as He alone can."
+
+She afterwards sent an autograph letter to Mrs. Garfield, and also asked
+for a photograph of the President.
+
+No American who was in London at that time, especially on the day of or
+President's funeral, so universally observed throughout Great Britain,
+can ever forget the generous, whole-souled sympathy of the English
+people, in part at least, inspired by the words 'and acts of the English
+Queen. The intense interest with which she had watched that melancholy
+struggle between "the Two Angels," over that distant death-bed, and the
+grief with which she beheld the issue were known and responded to, and so
+the noble contagion spread. It was not needed, perhaps, that signs of
+mourning should be shown in her Palace windows, to have them appear as
+they did, all over the vast city, but it was something strange and
+affecting to see those blinds of a proud royal abode lowered out of
+respect for the memory of a republican ruler, and sympathy for an
+untitled "sister-widow."
+
+We respected all those signs of mourning about us then--were grateful for
+them all, from the flag at half-mast and the tolling bell, to the closing
+of the shop of the small tradesman, and the bit of crape on the whip of
+the cabman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+My reasons for Honoring the Queen--Anecdotes--Some democratic reflections
+upon the Queen's position and her Subjects' loyalty--The Royal Children--
+Last words.
+
+
+My reasons for admiring and honoring Queen Victoria are, perhaps, amply
+revealed in this little book, but I will briefly recapitulate them:
+First, is her great power of loving, and tenacity in holding on to love.
+Next is her loyalty--that quality which makes her stand steadfastly by
+those she loves, through good and evil report, arid not afraid to do
+honor to a dead friend, be he prince or peasant--that quality which in
+her lofty position, makes her friendship for the unfortunate exile "as
+the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."
+
+Next I place her sincerity, her downright honesty, which makes falsehood
+and duplicity in those she has to do with, something to be wondered over
+as well as scorned. Next, is her courage, so abundantly shown in the many
+instances in which her life has been menaced. I do not believe that a
+braver woman lives than Queen Victoria.
+
+I admire her also for the respect and delicate consideration which she
+has always had for the royalty of intellect, for the pride and
+sensitiveness of genius. This peculiarity dates far back to when, as the
+young Princess Victoria, she timidly asked that such men as the poets
+Moore and Rogers, and the actors Charles Kemble and Macready might be
+presented to her. Thomas Campbell used to relate an incident showing what
+charming compliments she knew how to pay to poets. Wishing to witness the
+coronation, he wrote to the Earl Marshal, saying: "There is a place in
+the Abbey called 'The Poets' Corner,' which suggests the possibility of
+there being room in it for living poets also." This brought him a ticket
+of admission. His admiration of the young Queen's behavior was unbounded,
+and he says: "On returning home, I resolved out of pure esteem and
+veneration, to send her a copy of all say works. Accordingly I had them,
+bound up and went personally with them to Sir Henry Wheatley, who, when
+he understood my errand, told me that Her Majesty made it a rule to
+decline presents of this kind, as it placed her under obligations which
+were not pleasant to her. 'Say to Her Majesty, Sir Henry,' I replied,
+'that there is nothing which the Queen can touch with her sceptre in any
+of her dominions which I covet; and I therefore entreat you to present
+them with my devotion as a subject.' But the next day they were returned.
+I hesitated to open the parcel, but on doing so I found to my
+inexpressible joy a note enclosed, desiring my autograph on them. Having
+complied with this wish, I again transmitted the books to Her Majesty,
+and in the course of a day or two, received in return this elegant
+portrait engraving, with Her Majesty's autograph, as you see, below."
+
+The Queen was the friend of Charles Kingsley, and of Charles Dickens, in
+his later days. In presenting the latter with her. book, "_Leaves from
+a Journal of Our Life in the Highlands_" she spoke of herself as "the
+humblest of writers," and as almost ashamed to offer it, even with her
+priceless autograph, to "one of the greatest." Mr. Tennyson she delights
+to honor with her friendship. I have read a little story of her calling
+on him at his place, on the Isle of Wight. It seems he had not received
+due notice, or that, absorbed in writing, he had forgotten the hour. At
+all events, he was taken by surprise, and was obliged to run out to
+receive Her Majesty in his dressing-gown and slippers, and with his hair
+disheveled, as it had become in the fine frenzy of composition. Just
+think of Mr. Tennyson with his hair more than usually disheveled! Of
+course it was all right, as far as the Queen was concerned,--but then the
+footmen!
+
+In her youth, the Queen was very fond of the drama, and did honor to its
+representations, as we have seen. Rachel used to show, with especial
+pride, a costly bracelet, within which was the inscription, "_Victoria
+à Rachel._" When the beautiful English actress, Mrs. Warner, was
+slowly dying of cancer, the Queen, I am told, used to send daily one of
+her carriages to take her out for a drive--as the actress could not
+afford herself such a luxury.
+
+Of Americans distinguished for talent, Her Majesty has never failed to
+show, when in her power, a generous appreciation. As long ago as 1839,
+she invited to Buckingham Palace, Daniel Webster and Mrs. Webster. To our
+great statesman--who Miss Mitford, at the time, said was "the grandest-
+looking man" she had ever beheld, and whom Sydney Smith called, more
+tersely than elegantly, "a steam-engine in breeches"--the Queen was
+especially attentive, talking much with him; and he pronounced her "very
+intelligent." To Longfellow, purest of poets and sweetest of spirits, she
+showed a respect which was almost homage; and I am told that in Mr.
+Lowell, she respects the poet and the scholar, even more than the
+Minister. Ah, he is one whose poetic genius, whose scholarship, keen wit,
+and, above all, exquisite humor, the Prince-Consort would have
+appreciated and delighted in.
+
+Artists and men of letters have never been behindhand in tributes to the
+Queen. Every sculptor and painter to whom she has sat, has had the same
+story as Gibson and Leslie to tell of her kindness, taste and
+intelligence. Miss Fox, writing of Landseer, says, "He deeply admires the
+Queen's intellect, which he thinks superior to any woman's in Europe. Her
+memory is so remarkable that he has known her recall exact words of
+speeches, made years ago, which the speakers themselves had forgotten."
+
+That was saying too much, I think, when Mrs. Somerville, Miss Martineau,
+and Elizabeth Barrett were living, and working, in England. In the things
+pertaining to her station and vocation, Victoria doubtless was, and is,
+superior to any woman in Europe. The Duke of Wellington, who thought at
+fink that he could not get on with her, because he had "no small talk,"
+finally enjoyed conversing with her on the most serious matters of State.
+Sir Archibald Alison, in describing an evening with her and Prince
+Albert, says: "The Queen took her full share in the conversation, and I
+could easily see, from her quickness of apprehension. And the questions
+she put to those around her, that she possessed uncommon talent, a great
+desire for information, and, in particular, great rapidity of thought--a
+faculty often possessed by persons of her rank, and arising not merely
+from natural ability, but from the habit of conversing with the first men
+of the age."
+
+Ah, I wonder if Her Majesty has ever realized her blessed privilege in
+being able to converse freely with "the first men of the age"; to avow
+her interest in politics, which is history flowing by; in statesmanship,
+that cunning tapestry-work of empire, without fearing to be set down as
+"a strong-minded female out of her sphere."
+
+Much has been told me of the Queen's shrewdness and perspicacity. An
+English gentleman, who has opportunities of knowing much of her, lately
+said to me: "Her Majesty has an eagle-eye; she sees everything--sees
+everybody--sees through everybody." And this reminded me of a little
+anecdote, told me many years before, by an English fellow-traveler,--the
+story of a little informal interview, which amusingly revealed not only
+the Queen's quickness of perception, but directness of character.
+
+My informant was a young gentleman of very artistic tastes--a passionate
+picture-lover. He had seen all the great paintings in the public
+galleries of London, and had a strong desire to see those of Buckingham
+Palace, which, that not being a show-house, are inaccessible to an
+ordinary connoisseur. Fortune favored him at <last. He was the brother of
+a London carpet merchant, who had an order to put down new carpets in the
+State apartments of the palace; and so it chanced that the temptation
+came to my friend to put on a workman's blouse and thus enter the royal
+precincts, while the flag, indicating the presence of the august family,
+floated defiantly over the roof. So he effected an entrance, and, when
+once within the royal halls, dropped his assumed character and devoted
+himself to the pictures. It happened that he remained in one of the
+apartments after the workmen had left, and, while quite alone, the Queen
+came tripping in, wearing a plain white morning-dress, and followed by
+two or three of her younger children, dressed with like simplicity. She
+approached the supposed workman and, said: "Pray can you tell me when the
+new carpet will be put down in the Privy Council Chamber?" and he,
+thinking he had no right to appear to recognize the Queen under the
+circumstances, replied: "Really, madam--I cannot tell--but I will
+enquire." "Stay," she said abruptly, but not unkindly; "who are you? I
+perceive that you are not one of the workmen." Mr. W----, blushing and
+stammering somewhat, yet made a clean breast of it, and told the simple
+truth. The Queen seemed much amused with his _ruse_, and, for the sake of
+his love for art, forgave it; then added, smiling, "I knew, for all your
+dress, that you were a gentleman, because you did not address me as 'your
+Majesty.' Pray look at the pictures as long as you will. Good-morning!
+Come, chicks, we must go."
+
+I hear that a distinguished American friend has expressed a fear that I
+shall "idealize Queen Victoria." I do not think I have done so. I leave
+that to her English biographers and eulogists. In my researches, I have
+come upon curious things, in the way of pompous panegyric, which would
+have made Minerva the Wise, feel foolish, and which Juno the Superb,
+would have pronounced "a little too strong, really." I have not, it is
+true, pointed out faults--I have not been near enough to "the Queen's
+Most Excellent Majesty" to become acquainted with them. I presume she has
+them--I hope she has. I think all writers who deny her human weaknesses,
+or betray surprise at any exhibition of ordinary human feeling, pay the
+Queen a very poor compliment. There is in England a good deal of
+exaggerated expression of loyalty. Such words as "gracious" and
+"condescending" are habits and forms of speech. Of the real sentiment of
+loyalty, I do not think there is an excess--at least not toward the
+Queen. When Her Majesty gives way to natural emotion over the death of a
+friend, or over a great public calamity, I do not believe she likes to
+have the fact made a circumstance of. For instance, when that dreadful
+tragedy occurred in the Victoria Hall, at Sunderland, when hundreds of
+children perished, by being trampled underfoot and suffocated, the Court
+intelligence, which seemed to deepen the sadness in many minds, was that
+"Her Majesty was observed to weep on reading the account." This item went
+the rounds, and called forth such expressions of sympathy that one would
+have supposed that it was the august _mater patriæ_ at Windsor, who
+had been bereaved, and not those poor distracted mothers at Sunderland.
+Why should the Queen not weep over such a "massacre of the innocents,"
+like any other good, sympathetic, motherly woman? She has not wept away
+all her tears for herself.
+
+I remember at the time of the death of Lady Augusta Stanley, who had
+formerly been one of Her Majesty's Maids of Honor, much was said of the
+Queen's sympathy with the Dean. She attended the funeral, and afterwards,
+it is said, "led the widowed mourner into his desolate home." This act,
+so simple and sweet in a friend, was, I know, looked upon' by some as
+"condescension," in a sovereign; but how could one sorrowing human soul
+condescend to another--and that other Arthur Stanley? Sorrow is as great
+a leveler as death. Tears wash away all poor human distinctions.
+
+We also took the Queen's sympathy with us, in our great national-
+bereavement, too much as though it were something quite super-royal, if
+not superhuman. It was the exquisite wording of those telegrams which
+touched, melted our hearts; but we should have been neither surprised,
+nor overcome. It was beautiful, but it was natural. _She_ could not have
+said less, or said it differently. It was very sweet of her to send that
+floral offering, known and dear to us all as "the Queen's Wreath," but
+she sacrificed no dignity in so doing, as her flowers were to lie on the
+coffin of the ruler of a great empire--a ruler who had been as much
+greater than an ordinary monarch as election is greater than accident.
+
+Of course, as the Queen is the most interesting personage in all England,
+the least little things connected with her have an interest which
+Americans can hardly understand. In a handsome semi-official work called
+"A Diary of Royal Events," I find gravely related the story of an Osborne
+postman, who once lent the Queen and Prince Albert his umbrella, and was
+told to call for it at the great house, when he received it back, and
+with it a five-pound note. I see nothing very note-worthy in this, except
+the fact, honorable to humanity, of a borrowed umbrella being promptly
+returned, the owner calling for it. The five-pound note, though, was an
+"event" to the postman.
+
+A few concluding words about the Queen's children, who with many
+grandchildren "rise up to call her blessed."
+
+Victoria, the Crown Princess of Germany, is a fine-looking woman, with
+the same peculiarly German face, "round as an apple," which she had as a
+child. She is very clever, especially in art, and her character, formed
+under her father's hand, very noble. The Prince of Wales is a hard-
+working man in his way, which means in many ways, for the public benefit-
+-industrial, artistic, scientific and social. The people seem bent on
+making him true to his old Saxon motto--"_Ich dien_" (I serve). He
+is exceedingly popular, being very genial and affable--not jealous, it is
+said, of his dignity as a Prince, but very jealous of his dignity as a
+gentleman--and that is right; for kings may come, and kings may go, but
+the fine type of the English gentleman goes on forever. No revolution can
+depose it; no commune can destroy it--it is proof against dynamite.
+
+A handsome man is the Duke of Edinburgh (Prince Alfred), who no longer
+follows the sea, but is settled down in England, with his wife, a
+daughter of the late Czar, who testified by this alliance his wish to let
+Crimean "by-gones be by-gones"--till the next time, at least.
+
+The Duke resembles his father in his love for and cultivation of music.
+There does not seem to be any opening for him to play a part like that of
+Alfred the Great, but he can probably play the violin better than that
+monarch ever did. They drew another sort of a bow in those old days.
+
+The Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein (Princess Helena) is in
+appearance most like her mother, and perhaps in character and tastes, as
+she lives a life of quiet retirement, is a devoted wife and-mother, yet
+often giving her time and energies to a good work, or an artistic
+enterprise. She also is exceedingly fond of music and is an accomplished
+pianist. A passion for music belongs to this family by a double
+inheritance. Even poor, old, blind George the Third consoled himself at
+his organ, for the loss of an empire and the darkening of as world.
+
+The Duke of Connaught, whom we so pleasantly remember in America as
+Prince Arthur, is the soldier of the family--a real one, since he won his
+spars in Egypt. He has something of the grave, gentle look of his father,
+and is much liked and respected.
+
+The Princess Louise (Marchioness of Lome) is a beautiful woman, but with
+a somewhat cold and proud expression, a veritable _grande dame_. She
+is remarkably clever and accomplished, especially in art--modeling
+admirably well--for a Princess.
+
+Prince Leopold (Duke of Albany) is the scholar of the family--
+intellectually and morally more like Prince Albert, it is said, than any
+of his brothers. I was once told by the eminent Dr. James Martineau, who
+had met and conversed with him, that he was a young man of a very
+thoughtful mind, high aims, and quite remarkable acquirements. As Dr.
+Martineau is not of _the_ church, being a Unitarian divine, he
+cannot be suspected, in pronouncing such eulogies on the Queen's darling
+son, of having an eye to preferment-of working for a "living." On the
+whole, Her Majesty's sons are a decided improvement on her six royal
+uncles, on the paternal side.
+
+We come now to the youngest, the darling and delight of her father, the
+little one who "stood and looked at him," when he lay ill, marveling at
+the mysterious change in his dear face;--the Princess Beatrice--as
+closely associated, as constantly with her mother as was the Princess
+Victoria with the Duchess of Kent. She also is accomplished and clever,
+nor appears in any way to "unbeseem the promise of her spring." She also
+has the love of music which marks her race. She was little more than a
+baby when her father went away, and her innocent wonder and questioning
+must often have pierced her mother's wounded heart anew; and yet those
+little loving hands must have helped to draw that mother from the depths
+of gloom and despair in which she was so nearly engulfed. Though the
+youngest of all, her father seems to have delegated to her much of his
+dearest earthly care, and she the good daughter, is, it may be, led by
+unseen hands, and inspired by unspoken words of counsel and acceptance.
+So, though the life of the Princess Beatrice is not abounding in the
+Court gayeties and excitements which usually fall to the lot of a
+Princess, "young, and so fair," none, can question its happiness, for it
+is a life of duty and devotion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now my little biography is finished--"would it were worthier!"--and I
+must take leave of my illustrious subject, "kissing hands" in
+imagination, with profound respect. If I back out of the presence, it is
+not in unrepublican abasement, but because I am loath to turn my eyes
+away, from the kindly and now familiar face of the good woman, and the
+good Queen--VICTORIA.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Queen Victoria, her girlhood and
+womanhood, by Grace Greenwood
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEEN VICTORIA, HER GIRLHOOD ***
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+This file should be named 6469-8.txt or 6469-8.zip
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