602 



The Review of Reviews. 



were probably her chief amusements and must 

 have been a great resource to a girl who, if I 

 am not mistaken, was not allowed, for long after 

 this period, to walk downstairs without some- 

 one holding her hand. Small wonder that the 

 Queen's first decision was that she would see 

 Lord Melbourne " quite ALONE, as I shall 

 always do all my Ministers." The Princess was 

 very fond of her step-brother and sister, and her 

 diary has many delightful little touches about 

 them and other relations ; as also about many 

 people whose names are household words. 

 Landseer, for instance, is " an unassuming, 

 pleasing, and very young-looking man, with fair 

 hair." Perhaps most readers will like best the 

 freer diary after the Accession, when her com- 

 ments upon public events and her talks with 

 Lord Melbourne are unique. Naturally the bed- 

 chamber incident is of interest. When the 

 Whig Ministry went out of oflfice and Sir Robert 

 Peel was sent for, the young Queen was 

 astonished to find that she would have to lose 

 her ladies, to some of whom she was attached. 

 She told Sir Robert Peel that she would never 

 consent to give them up, and, she says, " I 

 never saw a man so frightened. He went 

 away and consulted his to-be colleagues, and, 

 returning, said that I must not only give up 

 those who were in Parliament, but all my ladies. 

 This was quite wonderful ! The ladies his only 

 support ! ! What an admission of weakness !" 

 The Queen stuck to her guns, and Sir Robert 

 Peel to his, so he declined office and the Whigs 

 returned, the people apparently approving, for 

 the Queen remarks upon the cheers and bravos 

 of the crowd on the Sunday after, when she was 

 driving to church. 



With two quotations I must conclude my too 

 few remarks upon this eventful book, a book 

 which shows the heart of the won.derful woman 

 who will always be " The " Queen to the elder 

 generation yet living. The question of the 

 Queen's marriage was, of course, of absorbing 

 interest to those about her, and the Uncle Leo- 

 pold, who had always acted a father's part, pro- 

 posed, as is well known, her cousin Albert of 

 Saxe Coburg-Gotha. The Queen shyly objected, 

 and said she could not think of marrying for 

 three or four years, but later her diary 

 records : — 



Albert really is quite charming, and so excessively 

 handsome, such beautiful blue eyes, an exquisite nose, 

 arid such a pretty mouth with delicate moustachios and 

 slight but very slight whiskers ; a beautiful figure, broad 

 in the shoulders and a fine waist. 



And shortly after : — 



_^ At about i p. 12 I sent for Albert ; he came to the 

 Closet where I was alone, and after a few minutes I said 

 to him that I thought he must be aware wliy I wished 

 them to come here — and that it would make me /op haffy 

 if he would consent to what I wished (to marrv me). We 



embraced each other, and he was so kind, so a/Teclionaic. 

 I told him I was quite unworthy of him — he said he 

 would be very happy "das Leben mit dir zu zubringen," 

 and was so kind, and seemed so happy, that I really felt 

 it was the happiest, brightest moment in my life. I told 

 him it was a great sacrifice — which he wouldn't allow. 



And the last entry is : — 



Dearest Albert came •end fetched me downstairs, 

 where we took leave of Mamma and drove ofT at near 

 4 ; I and Albert alone. 



THE COSMIC FORCE OF CHANGE.* 



This logical and forceful study of political 

 evolution, by the Liberal M.P. for Tyneside, 

 contains the closely reasoned ideas of a man 

 whose fearless and honest opinion is worth con- 

 sideration, even though we do not agree with 

 all his deductions. In an interesting account 

 of the origin of the book Mr. Robertson says 

 that it would be a study of great value to estab- 

 lish, by comparative work in universal history, 

 what are those constantly recurring economic 

 factors of each period which are so uniformly 

 followed by the development of other higher 

 intellectual values, and concludes that obviously 

 all critical exposition, historical or other, is an 

 attempt to influence the psychic processes of the 

 reader, to make him " feel " this and " think " 

 that; and that this psychic factor is conditioned 

 by material circumstances, by knowledge, and 

 by ignorance. To insist on the perpetual social 

 significance of all three is the general aim of 

 this book. Mr. Robertson's first axiom is that 

 politics, in its most general and fundamental 

 character, is the strife of wills on the ground of 

 social action, and that all energy divides 

 ostensibly into forces of attraction and repulsion. 

 He backs up his ideas by a series of fascinating 

 studies upon State evolution, as exemplified in 

 many countries, such as Rome, Greece, Scan- 

 dinavia, Holland, Switzerland, Brazil, our own 

 England, etc. We cannot accept all Mr. 

 Robertson's deductions; moreover, cold logic 

 often omits an important element which some 

 logicians rule out of court — the Divinity that 

 shapes our ends. 



The chapter on industrial evolution shows that 

 Mr. Robertson is a Free Trader; his conclusion 

 is that progress, as we shall see, is only in our 

 own day beginning to be conscious or calculated. 

 It has truly been, so far as most of the actors 

 are concerned, by unpath'd water to undream 'd 

 of shores. His hope is that the very recogni- 

 tion of the past course of the voyage will 

 establish a new art and a new science of social 

 navigation, and so he says that with the science 

 of universal evolution has come the faith in un- 



* The Evolution of States. By the Rt. Hon. 

 J. M. Robertson, M.P. (Watts and Co cs 

 net.) ^^' 



