I suppose it is impossible for young people of this day, especially
Americans, to realize the intense, enthusiastic interest felt forty-six
years ago by all classes, and in nearly all countries, in the young
English Queen. The old wondered and shook their heads over the mighty
responsibility imposed upon her--the young dreamed of her. She almost
made real to young girls the wildest romances of fairy lore. She called
out such chivalrous feelings in young men that they longed to champion
her on some field of battle, or in some perilous knightly adventure. She
stirred the hearts and inspired the imaginations of orators and poets.--
The great O'Connell, when there was some wild talk of deposing "the all
but infant Queen," and putting the Duke of Cumberland in her place, said
in his trumpet-like tones, which gave dignity to brogue: "If necessary, I
can get 500,000 brave Irishmen to defend the life, the honor, and the
person of the beloved young lady by whom England's throne is now filled."
Ah, the difference between then and now. "Brave Irishmen" of this day,
men who know not O'Connell, are more disposed to blow up the English
Queen's palaces, throne and all.

Charles Dickens, who was then full of romance and fancy, was, it is said,
possessed by such unresting, wondering thoughts of the fair maiden
sovereign, and her magnificent destiny, that for a time his more prosaic
friends regarded his enthusiasm as a sort of monomania. Other imaginative
young men with heads less "level" (to use an American expression) than
that of the great novelist, actually went mad--"clean daft"--the noble
passion of loving loyalty ending in an infatuation as absurd as it was
unhappy. Before the Queen left Kensington Palace she was much annoyed by
the persistent attentions of a provincial admirer, a respectable
gentleman, who labored under the hallucination that it was his destiny
and his duty to espouse the Queen. He may have felt a preference for