'" ... "I have
got toys for the children, and porcelain views for you." ... "Oh! how
lovely and friendly is this dear old country. How glad I should be to
have my little wife beside me, to share my pleasure."
Miss Mitford, speaking of a desire expressed by the Queen, to see that
quaint old place, Strawberry Hill and all its curiosities, says: "Nothing
can tend more to ensure popularity than that Her Majesty should partake
of the national amusements and the natural curiosity of the more
cultivated portion of her subjects."
In such directions, certainly, the Queen was never found wanting in those
days. In "natural curiosity" she was a veritable daughter of Eve, and
granddaughter of George the Third. She was interested not only in the
scientific discoveries, new mechanical inventions, and agricultural
improvements which so interested her husband, but in odd varieties of
animals and human creatures. She accepted with pleasure the gift of a
Liliputian horse, supposed to be the smallest in the world--over five
years old, and only twenty-seven and a half inches high--brought from
Java, by a sea-captain, who used to take the gallant steed under his arm,
and run down-stairs with him; and she very graciously received and was
immensely entertained with the distinguished young American, who should
have been the Alexander of that Bucephalus--General Tom Thumb.
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