The Queen's face has thinned and grown more oval since I
saw her four years ago as the Princess Victoria. She has been compelled
to think since then, and such exigencies in all stations in life work out
the expression of the face. She has now what I should pronounce a
decidedly intellectual countenance, a little petulant withal when she
turns to speak, but on the whole quite beautiful enough for a virgin
Queen. She was dressed less gaily than many others around her."
I have given much space to these personal descriptions of Queen Victoria
as she appeared in those first two years of her Queenhood, because they
are still to the world--the world of young people, at least--the most
interesting years of all her glorious reign. There was great poetry about
that time, and, it must be confessed, some peril.
Mrs. Oliphant, in her excellent little life of the Queen, says: "The
immediate circle of friends around the young sovereign fed her with no
flatteries."
It is difficult to believe such a statement of any mortal Court-circle.
But if gross adulation was not offered--a sort of moral pabulum, which
the Queen's admirable good sense would have rejected, there was profound
homage in the very attitude of courtiers and in the etiquette of Court
life.
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