.
wrote in his journal, after the Queen's first Council, "We basked in the full glare of royal sunshine;" and this tone was generally adopted by his party. They met with some amount of success in their loud assertion, and the consequence was a strain of indignant bitterness in the Tory rejoinder. A clever partisan inscribed on the window-pane of an inn at Huddersfield:
"The Queen is with us," Whigs insulting say,
"For when she found us in, she let us stay."
It may be so; but give me leave to doubt
How long she'll keep you when she finds you out.
There was even some cooling of Tory loyalty to the new Queen. Chroniclers tell us of the ostentatious difference in enthusiasm with which, at Tory dinners, the toasts of the Queen, and the Queen-dowager were received.
As a matter of course, Lord Melbourne became the Queen's instructor in the duties of her position, and as she had no private secretary, he had to be in constant attendance upon her—to see her, not only daily, but sometimes three or four times a day. The Queen has given her testimony to the unwearied kindness and pleasantness, the disinterested regard for her welfare, even the generous fairness to political opponents, with which her Prime Minister discharged his task. It seems as if the great trust imposed on him drew out all that was most manly and chivalrous in a character which, along with much that was fine and attractive, that won to him all who came in close contact with him, was not without the faults of the typical aristocrat, correctly or incorrectly defined by the popular imagination. Lord Melbourne, with his sense and spirit, honesty and good-nature, could be haughtily, indifferent, lazily self-indulgent, scornfully careless even to affectation, of the opinions of his social inferiors, as when he appeared to amuse himself with "idly blowing a feather or nursing a sofa-cushion while receiving an important and perhaps highly sensitive deputation from this or that commercial interest." The time has come when it is fully recognised that whatever might have been Lord Melbourne's defects, he never brought them into his relations with the Queen. To her he was the frank, sincere, devoted adviser of all that it was wisest and best for her to do. "He does not appear to have been greedy of power, or to have used any unfair means of getting or keeping it. The character of the young Sovereign seems to have impressed him deeply. His real or affected levity gave way to a genuine and lasting desire to make her life as happy and her reign as successful as he could. The Queen always felt the warmest affection and gratitude for him, and showed it long after the public had given up the suspicion that she could be a puppet in the hands of a Minister. "But men—especially Lord Melbourne's political adversaries—were not sufficiently large-minded and large-hearted to put this confidence in him beforehand. They remembered with wrath and disgust that, even in the language of men of the world, "his morals were not supposed to be very strict." He had been unhappy in his family life. The eccentricities and follies of Lady Caroline Lamb had formed the gossip of several London seasons long years before. Other scandals had gathered round his name, and though they had been to some extent disproven, it was indignantly asked, could there be a more unsuitable and undesirable guide for an innocent royal girl of eighteen than this accomplished, bland roue of threescore? Should he be permitted to soil—were it but in thought—the lily of whose stainlessness the nation was so proud? The result proved that Lord Melbourne could be a blameless, worthy servant to his Sovereign.
In the meantime the great news of Queen Victoria's accession had travelled to the princely student at Bonn, who responded to it in a manly, modest letter, in which he made no claim to share the greatness, while he referred to its noble, solemn side. Prince Albert wrote on the 26th of June: "Now you are Queen of the mightiest land of Europe; in your hand lies the happiness of millions. May Heaven assist you and strengthen you with its strength in that high but difficult task. I hope that your reign may be long, happy, and glorious, and that your efforts may be rewarded by the thankfulness and love of your subjects." To others he expressed his satisfaction at what he heard of his cousin's astonishing self-possession, and of the high praise bestowed on her by all parties, "which seemed to promise so auspiciously for her reign." But so far from putting himself forward or being thrust forward by their common friends as an aspirant for her hand, while she was yet only on the edge of that strong tide and giddy whirl of imposing power and dazzling adulation which was too likely to sweep her beyond his grasp, it was resolved by King Leopold and the kindred who were most concerned in the relations of the couple, that, to give time for matters to settle down, for the young Queen to know her own mind—above all, to dissipate the premature rumour of a formal engagement between the cousins which had taken persistent hold of the public mind ever since the visit of the Saxe-Coburg princes to Kensington Palace in the previous year, Prince Albert should travel for several months. Accordingly, he set out, in company with his brother, to make an enjoyable tour, on foot, through Switzerland and the north of Italy. To a nature like his, such an experience was full of keen delight; but in the midst of his intoxication he never forgot his cousin. The correspondence between them had been suffered to drop, but that she continued present to his thoughts was sufficiently indicated by the souvenirs he collected specially for her: the views of the scenes he visited, the Alpenrosen he gathered for her in its native home, Voltaire's autograph.
The Queen left Kensington, within a month of her uncle's death, we do not need to be told "greatly to the regret of the inhabitants." She went on the 13th of July to take up her residence at Buckingham Palace. "Shortly after one o'clock an escort of Lancers took up a position on the Palace Green, long previous to which an immense concourse of respectable persons had thronged the avenue and every open space near the Palace." About half-past one an open carriage drawn by four greys, preceded by two outriders, and followed by an open barouche, drawn by four bays, drove up from her Majesty's mews, Pimlico, and stopped before the grand entrance to the Duchess of Kent's apartments. The Queen, accompanied by the Duchess of Kent and Baroness Lehzen, almost immediately got into the first carriage. There was a tumult of cheering, frankly acknowledged. It is said the young Queen looked "pale and a little sad" at the parting moment. Then with a dash the carriages vanished in a cloud of July dust, and the familiar Palace Green, with its spreading trees and the red chimneys beyond—the High Street—Kensington Gore, were left behind. Kensington's last brief dream of a Court was brought to an abrupt conclusion. What was worse, Kensington's Princess was gone, never to return to the changed scene save for the most fleeting of visits.
We should like to give here one more story of her Majesty's stay at Kensington—a story that refers to these last days. We have already spoken of an old soldier-servant of the Duke of Kent's, said to have been named Stillman, who was quartered with his family—two of them sickly—in a Kensington cottage of the period, visited by the Duchess of Kent and the Princess Victoria. The little boy had died; the ailing girl still lived. The girl's clergyman, a gentleman named Vaughan, went to see her some days after the Queen had quitted the Palace, and found the invalid looking unusually bright. He inquired the reason. "Look there!". said the girl, and drew a book of Psalms from under her pillow, "look what the new Queen has sent me to-day by one of her ladies, with the message that, though now, as Queen of England, she had to leave Kensington, she did not forget me." The lady who had brought the book had said the lines and figures in the margin were the dates of the days on which the Queen herself had been accustomed to read the Psalms, and that the marker, with the little peacock on it, was worked by the Princess's own hand. The sick girl cried, and asked if this act was not beautiful?
CHAPTER V. THE PROROGUING OF PARLIAMENT, THE VISIT TO GUILDHALL, AND THE CORONATION.
Buckingham Palace had been a seat of the Duke of Buckingham's, which was bought by George II., and in the next reign was settled on Queen Charlotte instead of Somerset House, and called the "Queen's House." It was rebuilt by George IV. but not occupied by him, and had been rarely used by King William. Besides its gardens, which are of some extent, it shares with St. James's, which it is near, the advantage of St. James's Park, one of the most agreeable in London, and full of historic memories. Though it, too, was modernised by George IV., its features have still much interest. It was by its canal, which has been twisted into the Serpentine, that the Merry Monarch strolled alone, lazily playing with his dogs, feeding his