Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II

y contested for. In her Majesty's choice of localities it would seem as if she loved sometimes to retrace her early footsteps by going again with her husband

through lined the roads, the mayors of the various towns pre

oing over the whole manor-house, down to the kitchen, we cannot say; but it is not likely that her Majesty's predecessor underwent the ordeal to her gravity of passing through a gentleman's bedroom and finding his best wig and whiskers displayed upon a block on a chest of drawers. And we are not aware that Queen Elizabeth witnessed such an interesting family rite as that which her Majesty graced by her presence. The youngest daughter of the Marquis an

e ruins of another manor-house which, Lady Bloomfield heard, was built by the Cecils for a temporary resort when their house of Burghley was swept. The Queen and the Prince planted an oak and a lime, not far

d the somewhat anomalous office of Ranger of Greenwich Park. This was Princess Sophia Matilda, daughter of the Duke of

reign illegal. The children of the Duke of Gloucester and his Duchess were two-Prince William and Princess Sophia Matilda. They held the somewhat doubtful position, perhaps more marked in those days, of a family royal on one side of the house only. The brother, if not a very brilliant, an inoffensive and not an illiberal prince, though wicked wags called him "Silly Billy," improved the situation by his marriage with the amiable and popular Princess Mary, to whom a private gentleman, enamoured by hearsay with her virtues, left a considerable fortune. We get a passing glimpse of the sister, Princess Sophia Matilda, in Fanny Burney's diary. She was then a pretty, sprightly girl, having apparently inherited some of her beautiful mother's and half-sisters' attractions. She was admitted to terms of considerable familiarity and intimacy with her ro

unstripped of its splendid possessions and interesting antiquarian relics. The huge gathering of neighbours and tenants includ

into the open space of the park. Out the hares rushed from every quarter, "so many of them, that it was often impossible to stop more than one out of half-a-dozen. The ground immediately in front of the shooters became strewn with dead and dying.... It was curious to behold the evident reluctance with which the hares left their retreat, and then their perplexity at finding themselves so beset without. Many actually made for the canal, and swam like dogs across a piece of

we surprised that, on the next opportunity he had of exercising a sportsman's legitimate vocation, with the good qualiti

ty gathering, in order to confer on the upper ten thousand, within a radius of many miles, the much-prized honour of "meeting" the Queen at a dinner or a ball. Lastly, her Maj

ot only granted him the boon, but in consideration of his age, his laurels, and the long and intimate connection between them, she let the visit have more of a private and friendly character than the visits of sovereigns to subjects were wont to have. However, the country did not lose its gala. Arches of winter evergreens instead of summer flowers,

Majesty's permission I give the health of her Majesty,' and then the same to the Prince. They then adjourn to the library, and the Duke sits on the sofa by the Queen (almost as a father would sit by a daughter) for the rest of the even

in her first Council; he had witnessed her marriage; she was to give his name to one of her sons; in fact, he had taken part in every event of her life. The present arrangements were a graceful, well-nigh filial, tribute of affec

ted from the host, and which seemed more to the taste of the guest. And in the party of gentlemen who walke

rcise, the tennis-court came into request. Lord Charles Wellesley, the Duke's younger son, played against profes

rformed his part of riding on horseback by her Maj

's dry rebuffs, administered to the members of the press and th

Wellington presents his compliments to Mr. --, and begs to say he does not see what his house at Strathfieldsaye has to do with the public press." The other was in the form of a still more ironical notice pu

reign sovereigns, who were entertained in a manner becoming the dignity of the sovereign, "without adding one tittle to the burdens of the country. And I am not required, on the part of her Majesty," went on Sir Robert Peel, "to press for the extra expenditure of one single shilling on account of these unforeseen causes of increased expenditure. I think, to state this is only due to the personal credit of her Majesty, who insists upon it that there shall be every magnificence required by her station, but

ad read the report of Sir Robert Peel's speech listen complacently when it heard in the following month, of the Queen's acquisition of a private property which should be all her own and her husband's, to do with, as they chose. Another country bestowed, upon quite different grounds, on one of its sovereigns the honourable title of King Honest Man. Here was Queen Honest Woman, who would not buy what she could not afford, or ask her people to pay for fancies in which she indulged, regardless of her means. A different example had been presented by poor Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, who,

as a lovely place by nature, with no end of capabilities for the practice of the Prince's pleasant faculty of landscape-gardening, with which he had already done wonders in the circumscribed grounds of Buckingham Palace and the larger field of Windsor. There were not only woods and valleys and charming points of view-among them

e and their treatment, so as to secure permanent employment and ample provision for the labourers. Prince Albert's love of animals, too, found scope in these farming operations. When the Queen and the Prince visited the Home Farm the tame pigeons would settle on his hat and her shoulders. The accompanying engraving represents the pasture and part of the Home Farm at Osb

deen, the Order of the Garter, an offer which the Prime Minister respectfully declined in words that deserve to be remembered. He sprang from the people, he said, and was essentially of the people, and such an honour, in his case, would be misapplied. His heart was not set upon titles of honour or social di