522 Right Hon. Viscount Esher [March 5, 



evening in the Saloon. After staving a little while in the Saloon, we 

 went and sat down in the further Drawing Room, next to the Dining 

 Room. I sat on a sofa between Princesse Schwartzenberg and Mme. 

 Stroganoff ; Lord Melbourne sitting next Mme. Stroganoff ; and in a 

 little while Esterhazj near him, and Furstenberg (who talked amazingly 

 to Lord Melbourne, and made us laugh a good deal) ; behind him. 

 The Duchess of Sutherland and the Duchess of Northumberland sat 

 near Princesse Schwartzenberg, and a good many of the other 

 Ambassadors and Ambassadresses were seated near them. The 

 Duchess of Cambridge and Mama, &c., &c., were opposite to us ; and 

 all the others in different parts of tlie room. Several gentlemen, 

 foreigners, came up behind the sofa to speak to me. We talked and 

 laughed a good deal together. I stayed up till a J to 1. It was a 

 successful evening." 



The language is very simple, but Macaulay's famous description of 

 a scene in Whitehall is not more vivid. 



An Atmosphere of Deep Memories. 



I have some faint hope that through the medium of these quotations 

 from the Queen's Journals I may have been able to create that atmos- 

 phere of which I spoke. Remembering, as I myself do, what in later 

 days that atmosphere was, I am more than diffident. During these later 

 years, from which the published correspondence is far removed, there 

 was a hushed reverence surrounding the Queen, hard to describe, and 

 difficult even to suggest. It is no exaggeration to say that eminent 

 statesmen and humbler folk alike moved through the corridors of 

 Windsor as through a shrine. It was not the atmosphere of syco- 

 phancy or adulation. It was the atmosphere of deep memories, of noble 

 names, of Imperial growth, of national struggles, and of glorious 

 triumphs. It was an atmosphere of queenly pity, of intrepid courage, 

 of personal sorrows, and of duties simply performed through long 

 years, stretching far back beyond the remembrance of any save the 

 Queen herself. In spite of its grandeur, there was a solitude, an 

 aloofness, about the life of the Queen, which made men half. afraid to 

 speak above a whisper. 



I have dwelt, I hope not unduly, upon the earlier years of the 

 Queen's reign, for it is these years that the published correspondence 

 covers. In preparing that correspondence for publication it was felt 

 that it should tell its own story, and that no attempt should be made 

 to analyse or discuss the character and actions of the Queen. If it 

 should be found possible to bring the story down to a later period 

 the same course will be followed. And I may say that the interest 

 deepened as the years rolled on. This is not only because events are 

 more recent, and the personalities of those who surrounded the Queen 

 are more vividly known to us ; but because after the loss of her guide 

 and counsellor in 1861 the character of the Queen changed and 

 strengthened. For the first time she stood absolutely alone. Al- 



