[Illustration:  The Queen in her Wedding-Dress. After the Picture by Drummond.]

It was hinted by the would-be wise, in the early days of Her Majesty’s married life, that it would be idle to look for the royally maternal feeling of an Elizabeth towards her people in a wedded constitutional sovereign.  The judgment was a mistake.  The formal limitations of our Queen’s prerogative, sedulously as she has respected them, have never destroyed her sense of responsibility; wifehood and motherhood have not contracted her sympathies, but have deepened and widened them.  The very sorrows of her domestic life have knit her in fellowship with other mourners.  No great calamity can befall her humblest subjects, and she hear of it, but there comes the answering flash of tender pity.  She is more truly the mother of her people, having walked on a level with them, and with “Love, who is of the valley,” than if she had chosen to dwell alone and aloof.

[Illustration:  Sir Robert Peel.]

For some years after her marriage the Queen’s private life shows like a little isle of brightness in the midst of a stormy sea.  Within and without our borders there was small prospect of settled peace at the very time of that marriage.  We have said that Lord Melbourne was still Premier; but he and his Ministry had resigned office in the previous May, and had only come back to it in consequence of a curious misunderstanding known as “the Bedchamber difficulty.”  Sir Robert Peel, who was summoned to form a Ministry on Melbourne’s defeat and resignation, had asked from Her Majesty the dismissal of two ladies of her household, the wives of prominent members of the departing Whig Government; but his request conveyed to her mind the sense that he designed to deprive her of all her actual attendants, and against this imagined proposal she set herself energetically.  “She could not consent to a course which she conceived to be contrary to usage, and which was repugnant to her feelings.”  Peel on his part remained firm in his opinion as to the real necessity for the change which he had advocated.  From the deadlock produced by mere misunderstanding there seemed at the time only one way of escaping; the defeated Whig Government returned to office.  But Ministers who resumed power only because, “as gentlemen,” they felt bound to do so, had little chance of retaining it.  In September 1841, Lord Melbourne was superseded in the premiership by Sir Robert Peel, and then gave a final proof how single-minded was his loyal devotion by advising the new Prime Minister as to the tone and style likely to commend him to their royal mistress—­a tone of clear straightforwardness.  “The Queen,” said Melbourne—­who knew of what he was speaking, if any statesman then did—­“is not conceited; she is aware there are many things she cannot understand, and likes them explained to her elementarily, not at length and in detail, but shortly and clearly.”  The counsel was given and was accepted with equal good feeling, such as was honourable to all concerned; and the Sovereign learned, as years went on, to repose a singular confidence in the Minister with whom her first relations had been so unpropitious, but whose real honesty, ability, and loyalty soon approved themselves to her clear perceptions, which no prejudice has long been able to obscure.