Of course all this is false, unwholesome sentiment, quite
incomprehensible to nineteenth century Americans, though our great-
grandfathers understood this sort of personal loyalty very well, and
gloried in it, till George the Third drove them to the wall; and our
great-grandmothers cherished it as a sacred religious principle till
their tea was taxed. I dare say that if the truth could be got at, we
should find that little Victoria was at times trying enough to mother,
masters, and attendants; that she was occasionally passionate, perverse,
and "pestering," like all children who have any great and positive
elements in them. I dare say she was disposed, like any other "only
child," to be self-willed and selfish, and that she required a fair
amount of wholesome discipline, and that she got it. Had she been the
prim and pious little precocity which some biographers have painted her,
she would have died young, like the "Dairyman's Daughter"; we might have
had an edifying tract, and England a revolution.

One of her biographers speaks with a sort of ecstatic surprise of the
fact that the Princess was "affable--even gay," and that she "laughed and
chatted like other little girls." And yet she must early have perceived
that she was not quite like other little girls, but set up and apart.
Though reared with all the simplicity practicable for a Princess Royal,
she must have been conscious of a magic circle drawn round her, of a
barrier impalpable, but most real, which other children could not
voluntarily overpass. She must have seen that they could not call out to
her to "come and play!" that however shy she might feel, she must propose
the game, or the romp, as later she had to propose marriage. She even was
obliged to quarrel, if quarrel she did, all alone by herself. Any
resistance on the part of her playmates would have been a small variety
of high treason. She must sometimes, with her admirable good sense, have
been wearied and disgusted by so much concession, conciliation, and