[Illustration: The Queen in her Wedding-Dress. _After the Picture by_
Drummond.]

It was hinted by the would-be wise, in the early days of Her
Majesty's married life, that it would be idle to look for the royally
maternal feeling of an Elizabeth towards her people in a wedded
constitutional sovereign. The judgment was a mistake. The formal
limitations of our Queen's prerogative, sedulously as she has
respected them, have never destroyed her sense of responsibility;
wifehood and motherhood have not contracted her sympathies, but have
deepened and widened them. The very sorrows of her domestic life have
knit her in fellowship with other mourners. No great calamity can
befall her humblest subjects, and she hear of it, but there comes the
answering flash of tender pity. She is more truly the mother of her
people, having walked on a level with them, and with "Love, who is of
the valley," than if she had chosen to dwell alone and aloof.

[Illustration: Sir Robert Peel.]

For some years after her marriage the Queen's private life shows like
a little isle of brightness in the midst of a stormy sea. Within and
without our borders there was small prospect of settled peace at the
very time of that marriage. We have said that Lord Melbourne was
still Premier; but he and his Ministry had resigned office in the
previous May, and had only come back to it in consequence of a
curious misunderstanding known as "the Bedchamber difficulty." Sir
Robert Peel, who was summoned to form a Ministry on Melbourne's
defeat and resignation, had asked from Her Majesty the dismissal of
two ladies of her household, the wives of prominent members of the
departing Whig Government; but his request conveyed to her mind the