to his august Grandmother asking for some slight pecuniary assistance.  He received in return a just rebuke, telling him that little boys should keep within their limits, and that he must wait till his allowance next became due.  Shortly afterwards the undefeated little Prince resumed the correspondence in something like the following form:  “My dear Grandmamma,—­I am sure you will be glad to know that I need not trouble you for any money just now, for I sold your last letter to another boy here for 30s.”

As Royalty emerges from infancy and boyhood into the vulgar and artificial atmosphere of the grown-up world, it is daily and hourly exposed to such sycophancy that Royal persons acquire, quite unconsciously, a habit of regarding every subject in heaven and earth in its relation to themselves.  An amusing instance of this occurred a few years ago on an occasion when one of our most popular Princesses expressed a gracious wish to present a very smart young gentleman to the Queen.  This young man had a remarkably good opinion of himself; was the eldest son of a peer, and a Member of Parliament; and it happened that he was also related to a lady who belonged to one of the Royal Households.  So the Princess led the young exquisite to the august presence, and then sweetly said, “I present Mr. ——­, who is”—­not Lord Blank’s eldest son or Member for Loamshire, but—­“nephew to dear Aunt Cambridge’s lady.”  My young friend told me that he had never till that moment realized how completely he lacked a position of his own in the universe of created being.

FOOTNOTES: 

[26] June 20-27, 1897.

[27] All this is now ancient history. 1903.

XXIII.

LORD BEACONSFIELD.

Archbishop Tait wrote on the 11th of February 1877:  “Attended this week the opening of Parliament, the Queen being present, and wearing for the first time, some one says, her crown as Empress of India.  Lord Beaconsfield was on her left side, holding aloft the Sword of State.  At five the House again was crammed to see him take his seat; and Slingsby Bethell, equal to the occasion, read aloud the writ in very distinct tones.  All seemed to be founded on the model, ’What shall be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour?’”

Je ne suis pas la rose, mais j’ai vecu pres d’elle.  For the last month[28] our thoughts have been fixed upon the Queen to the exclusion of all else; but now the regal splendours of the Jubilee have faded.  The majestic theme is, in fact, exhausted; and we turn, by a natural transition, from the Royal Rose to its subservient primrose; from the wisest of Sovereigns to the wiliest of Premiers; from the character, habits, and life of the Queen to the personality of that extraordinary child of Israel who, though he was not the Rose, lived uncommonly near it; and who, more than any other Minister before or since his