The danger is that such rigid
principles, such systematic habits, adopted in youth, may in age become,
from being the ministers of one's will, the tyrants of one's life.
It seems to be somewhat so in the case of the Queen, for I hear it said
that the sun, the moon, and the tides are scarcely more punctual and
regular in their rounds and mighty offices, in their coming and going,
than she in the daily routine of her domestic and state duties and
frequent journeyings; and that the laws of the Medes and Persians are as
naught in inexorableness and inflexibility to the rules and regulations
of Windsor and Balmoral.
But the English people, even those directly inconvenienced at times by
those unbending habits and irrevocable rules, have no right to find
fault, for these be the right royal results of the admirable but somewhat
unyouthful qualities they adored in the young Queen. They have no right
to sneer because a place of honor is given in Her Majesty's household to
that meddlesome, old-fashioned German country cousin, Economy; for did
not they all rejoice in the early years of the reign to hear of this same
dame being introduced by those clever managers, Prince Albert and Baron
Stockmar, into the royal palaces, wherein she had not been seen for many
a year?
But to return to the little Princess.
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