"
Human nature is rash and young-woman-nature ambitious and ill-disposed to
profit by the costly experience of eld, and I doubt not the clever
Princess Royal or the proud and fair Princess Louise would have mounted
any throne in Christendom "without alarm." Most of Her Majesty's loyal
subjects deny that any harm came to her from her unsupported position as
Queen Regnant, or that she was capable of being thus harmed--but the
Queen knows best.
The Princess Victoria was a proud, high-spirited girl, and it were no
treason to suppose that at the first she had a sense of relief when the
leading-strings, in which she had been so long held, were cut, though by
the scissors of Atropos, and she was free to stand and go alone. Her good
mother, becoming at once an object of political jealousy, removed herself
from the old close companionship, though retaining in her heart the old
tender solicitude--perhaps feeling herself more than ever necessary to
her daughter. Mothers are so conceited. It is small wonder if after her
life of studious and modest seclusion and filial subordination, the
gaiety, the splendor, and the supremacy of the new existence intoxicated
the young sovereign somewhat. The pleasures of her capital and the homage
of the world captivated her imagination, while the consciousness of power
and wealth and personal loveliness inclined her to be self-indulgent and
self-willed.
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