GREAT BRITAIN AND HER QUEEN.

[Illustration: Kensington Palace]

CHAPTER I.

THE GIRL-QUEEN AND HER KINGDOM.

Rather more than one mortal lifetime, as we average life in these
later days, has elapsed since that June morning of 1837, when
Victoria of England, then a fair young princess of eighteen, was
roused from her tranquil sleep in the old palace at Kensington, and
bidden to rise and meet the Primate, and his dignified associates the
Lord Chamberlain and the royal physician, who "were come on business
of state to the Queen"--words of startling import, for they meant
that, while the royal maiden lay sleeping, the aged King, whose
heiress she was, had passed into the deeper sleep of death. It is
already an often-told story how promptly, on receiving that summons,
the young Queen rose and came to meet her first homagers, standing
before them in hastily assumed wrappings, her hair hanging loosely,
her feet in slippers, but in all her hearing such royally firm
composure as deeply impressed those heralds of her greatness, who
noticed at the same moment that her eyes were full of tears. This
little scene is not only charming and touching, it is very
significant, suggesting a combination of such qualities as are not
always found united: sovereign good sense and readiness, blending
with quick, artless feeling that sought no disguise--such feeling as
again betrayed itself when on her ensuing proclamation the new