KINGS AND QUEENS.

There are thirty-six of them in all, ranging from WILLIAM I., who
is "severe," to VICTORIA, who is just "good." I first made their
acquaintance in childhood, when my grandmother gave them me with the
laudable object of teaching me history. Each is a little wooden block
signifying a monarch. On one side there is a portrait showing the
face, collar and upper portion of torso of the monarch in question;
on the other side there is written a single word summing up his whole
character.

By means of these royal blocks I was brought up to a sound historical
sense based on religion and morality. At the age of seven I could
and did boast that I knew the innermost souls of all the monarchs
of England. I could say their dates by heart, often doing so during
sermon time on Sundays, with a grace and ease that only lifelong
acquaintance with royalty could have bred. I was even able to triumph
through that tricky period between the death of EDWARD III. and the
accession of ELIZABETH. I wonder if the late Lord ACTON was as learned
at that age: I am sure he could not say his dates backwards. I could.

It has always surprised those who have endeavoured to teach me
history that my youthful brain should be so strongly grounded in
the historical tradition of over half a century ago. Yet all the
historians of modern England could not shake me in my faith. To me
QUEEN VICTORIA was no "panting little German widow," as our latest
searcher after truth has affirmed, but the august lady who listened
entranced to the beautiful poems of Lord TENNYSON and invented
electricity and the tricycle. In consequence I was considered a
counter-revolutionary, if not bourgeois. My essays were deemed