It was fear of this bogie of a Cumberland that made the English people
anxious for the early marriage of the Queen, and yet caused them to dread
it, for the fate of poor Princess Charlotte had not been forgotten. But I
do not think that political or dynastic questions had much to do with the
popularity of the young Queen. It was the resurrection of the dead
dignity of the Royal House of Brunswick, in her fair person--the
resuscitation of the half-dead principle of loyalty in the hearts of her
people. Of her Majesty's subjects of the better class, actors and quakers
alone seem to have taken her accession with all its splendid accessions,
coolly,--the former, perhaps, because much mock royalty had somehow
cheapened the real thing, and the latter because trained from infancy to
disregard the pomps and show of this world. Macready jots down among the
little matters in his "Diary," the fact of Her Majesty coming to his
theatre, and waiting awhile after the play to see him and congratulate
him. He speaks of her as "a pretty little girl," and does not seem
particularly "set up" by her compliments. Joseph Sturge, the eminent and
most lovable philanthropist of Birmingham,--a "Friend indeed" to all "in
need,"--waited on Her Majesty, soon after her accession, as one of a
delegation of the Society of Friends. Some years after, he related the
circumstance to me, and simply described her to me as "a nice, pleasant,
modest young woman,--graceful, though a little shy, and on the whole,
comely."

"Did you kiss her hand?" I asked. "O yes, and found that act of homage no
hardship, I assure thee. It was a fair, soft, delicate little hand."

I afterwards regretted that I had not asked him what he did with his
broad-brimmed hat when he was about to be presented, knowing that the
principles of Fox and Penn forbade his removing that article in homage to
any human creature; but I have just discovered in a volume of Court