which his statesmanlike sagacity foresaw were likely to arise in the epoch of transition into which England and Europe were, in his view, rapidly advancing.

Stockmar, who had watched the Queen from childhood, wrote of her in 1847: "The Queen improves greatly. She makes daily advances in discernment and experience; the candour, the love of truth, the fairness, the considerateness with which she judges men and things are truly delightful, and the ingenuous self-knowledge with which she speaks about herself is amiable to a degree." Of that rare quality of ingenuousness I saw many illustrations. Thus, for example, how few would be ready to make so frank a confession as to any portion of their past lives as this, in a letter to me (February 18, 1869), which Her Majesty gave as a reason why she could not send, for the purpose of the Prince's biography, her letters during the first years after her accession:—

"Osborne, Feb. 18, 1869.

"The Queen's own letters between 1837 and 1840 are not pleasing, and are, indeed, rather painful to herself. It was the least sensible and satisfactory time in her whole life, and she must therefore destroy a great many. That life of constant amusement, flattery, excitement, and mere politics had a bad effect (as it must have upon any one) on her naturally simple and serious nature. But all changed in 1840 [with her marriage]."

The Queen's candour and love of truth, too, made her impatient at being praised where praise was not due, especially where praise should have been given to the Prince Consort. Thus she writes to Lord John Russell (November 18, 1860), on reading in a Cape journal a speech of Sir George Grey's extolling the nature of the education given to her eldest sons: "She feels, she must say, pained at such constant praise of her education of our sons, when it is all due to the Prince, and when his untiring and indefatigable exertions for our children's good is the chief, indeed sole, cause of the success which till now has attended our efforts.... The praise so constantly given to the Queen, and the popularity she enjoys, she knows and feels are due, in a great measure, to the guidance and assistance of the Prince, to be whose wife she considers so great a privilege, and she feels it almost wrong when praise is given to her for what she knows he deserves."

Every inch a Queen as she was, and careful that the Royal authority which she inherited should suffer no detriment in her hands, there ran through Her Majesty's nature a vein of modest humility as to her own knowledge and powers in things of common life, a seeking for guidance and help, which was infinitely touching. She made no secret to herself of her own faults and shortcomings. One does not expect queens to make acknowledgments of these, but even these were made upon occasion. Thus in her anxiety to throw light for me upon the Prince's character, she sent me a copy of a letter (July 13, 1848) in which he rebuked her, tenderly but firmly, for writing to him when he had gone from home on a public occasion, in what she calls "a very discreditable fit of pettishness, which she was humiliated to have to own," to the effect that he could do without her, and did not take her miniature with him. In her letter to me she says, that she would not have written as she did had she not been spoilt by his never really leaving her. The Prince's reply is too sacred to quote in full; but what wife's heart would not leap with joy to read the concluding words? "Dein liebes Bild trage Ich in mir; und die Miniaturen bleiben stets weit hinter diesen zurück; eine solche auf meinem Tisch zu stellen um mich Deiner zu erinnern bedarf es nicht."[11]

CHAPTER III.

The dominant quality in the Queen's character, it seemed to me, was her strong common-sense. It enabled her to see things in their just proportion, to avoid extremes, as a rule, in her estimate of persons, of opinions, and events; to accept the inevitable without futile murmur or resistance. Very early this quality must have been developed, and it will account for that perfect self-possession on the announcement of her accession and at her first Privy Council, which created surprise and admiration in all who witnessed it. Those who read of it were often incredulous, and stories of her agitation on these occasions have found a place from time to time in newspapers and elsewhere. One of these, which appeared in a respectable journal so late as November 1886, drew from the Queen the following very suggestive remark in a letter to me: "The Queen was not overwhelmed on her accession—rather full of courage, she may say. She took things as they came, as she knew they must be." It was so with her through life. She met trial, difficulty, or danger "with courage," and reconciled herself with a thoughtful constant spirit, and without passionate remonstrance, to what she "knew must be." What but this quality of mind, and her strong sense of the claims of duty upon her as Sovereign, could have enabled her within a few days after the loss, which for a long time took all sunshine out of her life, to resume her active duties as Queen, and to continue them unbrokenly through feeble health and the many domestic anxieties and bereavements which during her long life pressed frequently and heavily upon her? The Queen's historian will have much to tell in illustration of her breadth of view, her prompt decision, and undaunted spirit in times of political difficulty. At these times, the truly Royal spirit within her answered to the call. A judgment enlightened by a vast experience, and unwarped by prejudice, then came into play. Her sole thought was for the good of her people, and to see that neither this, nor the position of her Empire before the world, should be in anywise impaired. To this end she brought into play the well-balanced judgment, which begets and is alone entitled to the name of common-sense.

The same quality was equally conspicuous in her judgment of the affairs of ordinary life. Of this I might have been able to give many examples, had I not made it my rule never to make a memorandum of any remarks on men and things that fell from Her Majesty at any of my interviews with her. In her letters to me, acute and characteristic remarks like the following frequently occurred: "The wisest and best people are sadly weak and foolish about Great Marriages. The Queen cannot comprehend it." With her experience of the private history of the many homes of both the noble and the rich, who so able as she to judge how little of the true happiness of life results from the gratification of such an ambition? "Her sagacity in reading people and their ruling motives and weaknesses" was remarkable. This was noted by Archbishop Benson, and it often broke into remarks touched more with kindliness and humour than with sarcasm. The Archbishop also remarks, truly, that the Queen "was shrewder and fuller of knowledge than most men." "She had not much patience with their follies and the pettiness of their desires." One recognises as very characteristic a remark of hers which the Archbishop quotes: "I cannot understand the world—cannot comprehend the frivolities and littlenesses. It seems to me as