the many officials who, by a fiction of etiquette, had been formerly supposed to do everything while they did and could do nothing.  The long-needed reform could not but be pleasing to the Queen, being quite in harmony with the upright principles that had always ruled her conduct, she having begun her reign by paying off the debts of her dead father—­debts contracted not in her lifetime nor on her account, and which a spirit less purely honourable might therefore have declined to recognise.

[Illustration:  Osborne House.]

Thanks to the Prince’s able management, the royal pair found it in their power to purchase for themselves the estate of Osborne, in the Isle of Wight—­a charming retreat all their own, which they could adorn for their delight with no thought of the thronging public; where the Prince could farm and build and garden to his heart’s content, and all could escape from the stately restraints of their burdensome rank, and from “the bitterness people create for themselves in London.”  Before very long they found for themselves that Highland holiday home of Balmoral which was to be so peculiarly dear, and in which Her Majesty—­whose first visit to the then discontented Scotland was deemed quite a risky experiment—­was so completely to win for herself the admiring love of her Scottish subjects.

At Balmoral Mr. Greville saw them some little time after their acquisition of the place, and witnesses to the “simplicity and ease” with which they lived, to the gay good humour that pervaded their circle—­“the Queen running in and out of the house all day long, often going out alone, walking into the cottages, sitting down and chatting with the old women,” the Prince free from trammels of etiquette, showing what native charm of manner and what high, cultivated intelligence were really his.  The impression is identical with that conveyed by Her Majesty’s published Journal of that Highland life; and, though lacking the many graceful details of that record, the testimony has its own value.  Happy indeed was the Sovereign for whom the black cloud of those years showed such a silver lining!  Other potentates were less happy, both as regarded their private blessings and their public fortunes.

It would be agreeable to English feelings, but not altogether consonant with historic truth, if we could leave unnoticed the scandalous attempts on the Queen’s life which marked the earliest period of her reign and have been renewed in later days.  The first attacks were by far of the most alarming character, but Her Majesty, whose escape on one occasion seemed due only to her husband’s prompt action, never betrayed any agitation or alarm; and her dauntless bearing, and the care for others which she manifested by dispensing with the presence of her usual lady attendants when she anticipated one of these assaults, immensely increased the already high esteem in which her people held her.  The first assailant, a half-crazy