hint was obvious: but she would not take it even from the revered uncle. She clung to the shadow which involved her in nothing she did not like: she shrank back from the reality which demanded sacrifices from her shyness, timidity and love of privacy and retirement. She would not allow herself to see the inconvenience caused to the public service by her perpetual absence from London. Not even when her Ministers believed in a plot against her life and were anxious about the risks she ran at Osborne, would she come even to Windsor; and as to London, her reply was that 'to London nothing would make her go.' She would go to Germany when she wished, in spite of an appeal from Gladstone as to the bad effect which might be produced by her absence during a possible crisis: to places in her own dominions where public functions called for her presence she would not go. Her habits added greatly to the labours of her Ministers, as even when she was at Osborne or Balmoral she expected their frequent attendance upon her. She gave up proroguing Parliament, and seldom opened it. She complained of the trouble and expense of entertaining foreign Sovereigns. One does not wish to judge her: indeed, no one who reads her letters can help feeling for her and pitying her. She was a broken woman, a widow, and, partly because she was a Queen and partly because she had had an exceptional husband, much more lonely than other widows. She writes to Lord Russell in 1866:

'The Queen must say that she does feel very bitterly the want of feeling of those who ask the Queen to go to open Parliament. That the public should wish to see her she fully understands and has no wish to prevent-quite the contrary; but why this wish should be of so unreasonable and unfeeling a nature, as to long to witness the spectacle of a poor, brokenhearted widow, nervous and shrinking, dragged in deep mourning, ALONE in STATE as a Show, where she used to go supported by her husband, to be gazed at, without delicacy of feeling, is a thing she cannot understand, and she never could wish her bitterest foe to be exposed to!'

And then

The thing had plainly got on her nerves. one has to remember that attempts had more than once been made on her life. The writer of this article once

heard Lord Aberdare say that she had told him he would not press her to perform functions if he knew that she was all the time in fear of assassination. And he has himself been witness of her visible alarm when an accident blocked her carriage in a London street. One cannot blame. One can only regret. It is difficult not to think that, if she would have absolved herself from some of the arduous deskwork which must have exhausted her, however much she liked it, her nerves would not have been unequal to the performance of the functions which only she could perform. That would have helped her in her real task, which was to give England and the British Empire a new Monarchy; while all those laborious hours of reading and writing could only vainly try to continue the old Monarchy which the scale and complexity of the modern political world have placed outside present political possibilities. She did create the new, by the immense respect which her character universally inspired, by the impression, almost one of awe, which she made on the few who came into her presence, by her quite original gift of taking all her people into her confidence, by the moving letters she addressed to them in times of special joy or sorrow, by her instinct of Empire which touched dwellers in its remotest parts, by her sex and age, which ultimately made her into a kind of legend, a sort of 'divus Cæsar,' of the whole British world.

The legend and the mystery probably did more for the Monarchy in the end than any visible presence could. But they were always helped by the visible presence of her children and grandchildren. And, however successful she was, there can be no doubt that her children showed a truer Royal instinct than she in this matter of visibility. For no one can count on becoming a legend; and the Sovereign who is unseen may only too easily be forgotten or ignored. An hereditary Sovereign can seldom, by the laws of nature, be a person of exceptional ability. His Ministers will commonly be abler than himself. But, unless his reign is very short, he ought to be able to acquire, and to deserve, a sort of influence which they can hardly ever have. The Monarchy is the permanent, the visible, the universal, the imaginative, element in our Constitution. The King is never out of office and belongs

to no party. He is not an Englishman or a Scot or a Welshman; he scarcely belongs more to this island than to the Continent of Australia or the Dominion of Canada: he is the personification of the whole race and the whole Empire. If he knows how to use his opportunities he must acquire an experience and gather round him a loyalty which no Minister can equal. It is not his task to try, as Queen Victoria vainly tried, to play a part in all the daily details of the business of the Empire. It is his part, and it can be a very valuable one, to be a kind of exceptionally august and venerable Elder Statesman, or perpetual Minister without Portfolio; a member of all Cabinets, who has always to be consulted on all great questions. And to those great functions he may well bring, if not an ability, at least an experience, a detachment from party, a relation to the whole people, an instinct of continuity and of the great national tradition, to which only very exceptional Ministers ever attain. His weight in the counsels of the country will not depend, as Queen Victoria too much depended, on a tenacious insistence on more or less obsolete legal rights. It will depend on the position he has won for himself in the mind of the nation and the Empire. If he is known and honoured, trusted and loved, which will seldom happen if he is not often seen, he will speak with an authority to which his Ministers cannot refuse to listen. Only he must remember what Queen Victoria forgot, that he cannot speak and they cannot listen, unless he is generally in London and frequently sees them.

All this about the Queen. It is time for a last word about the woman. Of her, however, as has already been said, the new letters tell us comparatively little. The gulf of temperament which separated her from her eldest son is again evident here, though we see & great deal less of it than in Sir Sidney Lee's Life of Edward VII.' Good woman as the Queen was, and full of personal humility as is shown here again and again, she did not escape the jealousy with which Sovereigns, and indeed lesser magnates, seem always to regard the sons who must be their heirs. She was an affectionate mother and he was an affectionate and very dutiful son. She calls him that, in her most

private papers, more than once, and says that he is only
anxious to do what she wishes. Yet the clash, such as
it was, was inevitable. She wanted him to live a dull
and retired life such as she and his father liked: and it
was a life that the man in him found unendurable and
the Prince saw to be unwise. She does not wish him
and the Princess to dine anywhere during their first
season except with two or three old statesmen and at
the three or four only great houses of London.' Five
years later she declines Disraeli's suggestion that he
should spend an autumn in Ireland, as ‘any encourage-
ment of his constant love of running about and not
keeping at home, or near the Queen, is most earnestly
and seriously to be deprecated.' And in 1870 she wishes
him only to go two days to Ascot: and he has to reply:
'I fear, dear Mama, that no year goes round without
your giving me a jobation on the subject of racing'; and
to defend himself very firmly and at some length:
ending, 'I am always most anxious to meet your wishes,
dear Mama, in every respect, and always regret if we
are not quite d'accord-but as I am past twenty-eight
and have some considerable knowledge of the world and
society, you will, I am sure, at least I trust, allow me to
use my own discretion in matters of this kind.' Yet,
impatient as she was of his devotion to society, she
made no contribution whatever towards the solution
of the difficult problem of discovering what is the
proper business of a Prince of Wales.
To the con-
tributions which he made for himself, the constant
travelling, the getting to know everybody of import-
ance at home and abroad, the presiding over all the
non-party activities of the nation, she gave at best
a lukewarm approval; and she added none of her
own. To a project vaguely entertained by Gladstone
and Disraeli of making him a non-political Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland she gave a partial consent; but
he did not desire that, and Gladstone in the end agreed
with him. But she gave no encouragement to his wish
to be attached to different Government offices and see
something of their business, and she would not agree to
his even seeing despatches except through her. It was
to her youngest son, on the pretence of his being her
Secretary, and not to the future King, that she accorded

the privilege of a Cabinet key! Her excuse, not altogether an unfounded one, was that many of the people the Prince of Wales lived with were not fit people to be trusted with grave affairs. But he could not but resent such treatment: and it is infinitely to his credit that, according to the report of one who knew him and his mother and all her children well, he never was heard to speak of her, as more favoured children sometimes did, in any language but that of affection and respect.

Of her private tastes and pleasures we get few glimpses. There is an occasional allusion to music, probably the art she understood best. There is an enthusiastic outburst about Landseer at his death, ‘a great genius in his day and one of the most popular of English artists . . . he kindly had shown me how to draw stags' heads, and how to draw in chalks, but I never could manage that well'; and there is a characteristic disapproval of the election to the Academy Presidency of Sir Francis Grant, who boasts of never having been in Italy or studied the old Masters.' There are meetings, arranged by Lady Augusta Stanley, with Browning (the poet, a very agreeable man'); Carlyle ('a strange-looking eccentric old Scotchman who holds forth in a drawling melancholy voice, with a broad Scotch accent, upon the utter degeneration of everything'); and other intellectual notabilities. There is a visit to Tennyson ('very peculiar-looking, tall, dark, with a fine head, long black flowing hair and a beard: oddly dressed, but there is no affectation about him '); and there is a quotation from In Memoriam' introduced into a letter to a Foreign Secretary. That is almost the only allusion to a book in these volumes: except a letter which shows her distributing over 4000l. profit which remained to her from her own book Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands' after she had paid the editor, Mr Helps. And there is another letter written in 1878 in which we find her reading 'Coningsby': 'a very remarkable strange book,' with some beautiful sentiments in it and some very striking opinions, a sort of democratic conservatism, but the same large patriotic views he holds now.' The language, however, she finds 'too stilted and unnatural.'