"She is now," he
says, "so far satisfied with the likeness that she does not wish me to
touch it again. She sat five times--not only for the face, but for as
much as is seen of the figure, and for the hands, with the coronation-
ring on the finger. Her hands, by the by, are very pretty--the backs
dimpled and the fingers delicately shaped. She was particular to have her
hair dressed exactly as she wore it at the ceremony every time she sat."
The Queen in her writings says very little of this portion of her
"strange, eventful history,"--a time so filled with incident, so gilded
with romance, so bathed in poetry, so altogether splendid in the eyes of
all the world; for to her, life--or all which was most "happy and
glorious" in life--began and ended with Prince Albert. She even speaks
with regret of that period of single queenliness, and says: "A worse
school for a young girl--one more detrimental to all natural feelings and
affections--cannot well be imagined than the position of a Queen at
eighteen without experience and without a husband to guide and support
her. This the Queen can state from painful experience, and she thanks God
that none of her own dear daughters are exposed to such danger.
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