first gave the usual intellectual explanation of her feeling, 'Mummy, I
do think you are the most beautiful Mummy in the whole world,' and then,
after a moment's thought, corrected herself by saying, 'But there, they
do say love is blind.'

A monarch is a life-long candidate, and there exists a singularly
elaborate traditional art of producing personal affection for him. It is
more important that he should be seen than that he should speak or act.
His portrait appears on every coin and stamp, and apart from any
question of personal beauty, produces most effect when it is a good
likeness. Any one, for instance, who can clearly recall his own emotions
during the later years of Queen Victoria's reign, will remember a
measurable increase of his affection for her, when, in 1897, a
thoroughly life-like portrait took the place on the coins of the
conventional head of 1837-1887, and the awkward compromise of the first
Jubilee year. In the case of monarchy one can also watch the
intellectualisation of the whole process by the newspapers, the official
biographers, the courtiers, and possibly the monarch himself. The daily
bulletin of details as to his walks and drives is, in reality, the more
likely to create a vivid impression of his personality, and therefore to
produce this particular kind of emotion, the more ordinary the events
described are in themselves. But since an emotion arising out of
ordinary events is difficult to explain on a purely intellectual basis,
these events are written about as revealing a life of extraordinary
regularity and industry. When the affection is formed it is even
sometimes described as an inevitable reasoned conclusion arising from
reflection upon a reign during which there have been an unusual number
of good harvests or great inventions.

Sometimes the impulse of affection is excited to a point at which its