1909] on The Letters of Queen Victoria. 523 



though, as she herself said, in her desolate and isolated condition she 

 turned to Lord Palmerston and to Lord John Russell as old and tried 

 friends, they did not and could not occupy the place that had been 

 filled by Lord Melbourne in her girlhood, and by the Prince Consort 

 through her happy married life. It is only within the last few months 

 that by an accident the Queen's letters to Lord John Russell have 

 come to light — and it is curious to observe that for four years she 

 wrote to him in her own hand at least once a day. During most of 

 that period Lord John Russell was Foreign Secretary. The Queen 

 was learning to walk alone. 



What we Owe to Queen Victoria. 



This is not the time or place in which to attempt any deeper 

 analysis of the character of Queen Victoria. If, as Cardinal Newman 

 once said, men are guided by type rather than by argument, and if 

 the majority are swayed more by example than by the logic of facts, 

 the Queen has rendered a mighty service not only to her people but 

 to her successors on the Throne of this Kingdom. No Sovereign 

 ever exercised over the minds of men and women of many races a 

 more powerful influence. 



We started to inquire — What we owe to Queen Victoria ; what 

 was the secret of her influence ; and what wiU be her place in history ? 

 I venture to hope that to these questions I may have suggested, under 

 the necessary limitations of such an occasion as this, a partial reply. 

 We owe to Queen Victoria the reinstatement of the Monarchical 

 principle in the eyes of all grave and earnest men. We ow^e to her 

 the deep respect with which the British Crown is regarded by the 

 subjects of this vast Empire. The secret of her influence was her 

 unfaltering devotion to duty, her simple regard and — if the word is 

 not misplaced — her narrow adhesion to the plain unvarnished truth 

 in every action and relation of her long life. To attempt to expose 

 her weaknesses would be an unbecoming and singularly fruitless task. 

 We do not claim — those who were her loyal and devoted subjects — 

 that she was other than extremely human. But we do claim that, in 

 the glare of her great virtues, her faults may be allowed to lie in 

 shadow. 



The Queen's place in history cannot yet be defined. There are 

 few more treacherous quicksands than those which surround the 

 domain of historical forecast. This much, however, may be safely 

 ventured : that as the reign of EHzabeth rounded off and set a seal 

 on that period of splendid intellectual growth, during which England 

 became one of the first of European Powers, so the reign of Queen 

 Victoria rounded off and set a seal upon that no less heroic period of 

 commercial and racial expansion in w^hich Great Britain became a 

 world-wide Empire. 



[E.] 



