accepted without demur the next wave of fashion that swept over Europe
from London _via_ Paris.

The Queen never herself opened a paper. Extracts were read out to her
each day by one of her ladies; these being selected by another lady
appointed for the purpose as those most likely to interest the royal
mind. It was made known in the press that her Majesty never read the
divorce cases; neither did she read politics or the police news. No
controversial side of the national life ever entered her brain--until
somehow or another it was reached by the dim uproar of the Women
Chartists' movement. She expressed her disapproval, and the page was
turned.

Her instinctive tastes stood always as a guide for what she should be
told; and experience limited her inquiry. In all her life her influence
had never been used for the release of an unjustly convicted prisoner,
the abatement of an inhuman sentence, or the abolition of any abuse
established by law. Queens who had done these things in the past were
medieval figures, and such interference was quite unsuitable for a royal
consort under modern conditions. Had Philippa of Hainault lived in these
more enlightened times she would have been forced to let the Burghers of
Calais go hang and restrict herself to making provision for their widows
and orphans; for to arrest any act of government had long since ceased
to be within the functions of a queen.

Like her husband, this royal lady was surrounded by officialdom, or,
rather, by its complementary and feminine appendices--the wives and
daughters of the aristocracy, of politicians, of ecclesiastical and
military dignitaries: these to her represented the sphere, activity, and
capacity of her own sex. Other women--pioneers of education and of