perception, and a memory of singular tenacity, this would have been impossible; and it requires no effort of imagination to understand how great to her must have been the resulting exhaustion of both body and mind, and how natural the occasional fear, to use her own words, that some day "she might quite break down." She was not singular in this fear, for it was shared by those who knew her best, and especially by her uncle, the King of the Belgians—and no one knew her better than he, both in her strength and in her weakness. When spoken to about her seclusion and the prevailing desire that she could come more into public life, his advice was to leave her alone. "Pauvre Victoire," M. Van de Weyer told me were his words, "ne la tourmentez pas!"

The outside world, of course, did not then know how great was the additional burden that had been thrown upon Her Majesty. Only the Queen herself could enlighten her subjects upon this point, unless some of Her Majesty's Ministers had taken occasion to do so, which they might well have done, but none of them did. This I had to explain to the Queen when she asked me, by her note, above cited, of the 19th of January 1868, and again personally at Osborne, to take means to let the public know the truth. At the same time, I ventured to offer my opinion, that it was neither necessary nor desirable to make any public declaration on the subject. Whatever might be said by some, her people, I was sure, had entire trust in her doing what was best, and that she would appear in public whenever the necessity for doing so arose. My views prevailed, and the enthusiastic reception given within the next few days to the Leaves from a Journal, and the warm expressions of loyal devotion stimulated by the insight there given into the Queen's character, came, happily, to confirm my opinion. It was still further confirmed by the reception given to the Queen on her visiting the City to open the new Blackfriars Bridge and the Holborn Bridge and Viaduct on the 6th of November 1869, of which she wrote to me (11th November): "Nothing could be more successful than the progress and ceremony of Saturday. The greatest enthusiasm prevailed, and the reception by countless thousands of all classes, especially in the City, was most loyal and gratifying—not a word, not a cry, that could offend any one." The subject of a public statement was not again mooted. Her Majesty was content to wait until the story I should have to tell in the Prince's Life should fully open the eyes of her people to the truth.

Complaints ceased for a time, but during the year 1870 they were renewed in some of the leading journals, and again the Queen felt deeply wounded—how deeply will presently appear. In the autumn of 1871 she had a serious illness, which occasioned general alarm, and the journals teemed with expressions of the devotion and the sympathetic interest which lay at the heart of all Her Majesty's subjects. To this change is due the following letter:—

"Balmoral, Septr. 17, 1871.

"Long, long has the Queen wished to write to Mr Martin, but her very severe illness has prevented her from doing so. She is now, however, going on so satisfactorily, though very slowly, that she is glad to be able to thank him for his kind inquiries and letters.

"The Queen cannot help referring to the articles in Thursday's Times, and in Friday's Daily News, which are very gratifying, as these go the length of expressing remorse at the heartless, cruel way in which they had attacked the Queen. Mr Martin wrote rightly, that the words were not spoken which were needed to make the public understand that the Queen could not do more than human strength could bear.[5] Mr Martin will recollect the Queen's distress for some years past, and how little she was believed. The unjust attacks this year, the great worry and anxiety and hard work for ten years, alone, unaided, with increasing age and never very strong health, broke the Queen down, and almost drove her to despair. The result has been the very, very serious illness—the severest, except one (a typhoid fever in 1835), she ever had—and more suffering than she has ever endured in her life. Now that people are frightened and kind, the Queen will be kindly treated in future; but it is very hard that it was necessary she should have the severe illness and great suffering, which has left her very weak, to make people feel for and understand her.... The sympathy in dear Scotland has been great, and their press was the first to raise their voice in defence of a cruelly misunderstood woman. She will never forget this."

After this time Her Majesty had no reason, so far as I know, to complain that she was "cruelly misunderstood" by any section of her people. They learned to understand and to sympathise with her, for they saw day by day how close a watch she kept upon all public affairs, how full her thoughts were of them and their wellbeing, and how tender were her sympathies with all of them who were "in danger, necessity, or tribulation."

No one could be much in communication with the Queen without being struck by her power of saying concisely what she had to say in the plainest and clearest language. The swiftness of her thought was apparent in her beautiful, firm, rapid writing. Its clearness was equally shown in her happy choice of the simplest words. She had so much ground to get over daily that she had no time to waste in elaborate expression. For her the one thing important was, that no room should be left for any misapprehension of her meaning—in short, that she should make what was plain to her own mind as plain to the minds of others as it was to herself. If a simple, everyday word or phrase would serve her purpose, she preferred it to anything more ornate. In the course of editing the Leaves from a Journal, Mr Helps had many struggles with Her Majesty about what he thought her too homely style, which she defended, because she could not bear it to be thought that what she wrote was written "for style and effect." "It was," she wrote to me (20th October 1868), "the simplicity of the style, and the absence of all appearance of writing for effect, which had given her book such immense and undeserved success. Besides, how could Mr Helps expect pains to be taken when she wrote late at night, suffering from headache and exhaustion, and in dreadful haste, and not for publication?"

This artless skill in rendering a fresh, unstudied transcript of her impressions—a power eagerly sought for, but very often unattained by men of letters—undoubtedly gave to these jottings in Her Majesty's Journal their special charm. But its value was apparent in all she wrote. The habit of getting as near in words as possible to what was in her own mind gave great vividness and graphic force upon occasion to her style, especially where matters of importance had to be dealt with. When an authoritative Life of Her Majesty is written, proofs of this will be abundant. But, to speak only of what is already before the world, what could be more happy or to the purpose than the Addresses and Messages which she issued upon occasion to her people, and which in point merely of style, apart from the governing thought and feeling, were always masterly? The same characteristic was conspicuous in her conversation.