her in her robes of state brought tears into my eyes, and it had this
effect upon many people; she looked almost like a child." Campbell, the
poet, is related to have said to a friend: "I was at Her Majesty's
coronation in Westminster Abbey, and she conducted herself so well during
the long and fatiguing ceremony that I shed tears many times."

Carlyle said at the time, with a shake of his craggy, shaggy head: "Poor
little Queen! she is at an age at which a girl can hardly be trusted to
choose a bonnet for herself, yet a task is laid upon her from which an
archangel might shrink.":

And yet, according to Earl Russell, this "poor little Queen," over whom
the painters and poets wept, and the great critic "roared gently" his
lofty commiseration, informed her anxious mother that she "ascended the
throne without alarm." Victoria, if reminded of this in later years,
might have said, "They who know nothing, fear nothing"; and yet the very
vagueness, as well as vastness, of the untried life would have appalled
many spirits.

The Queen was certainly a very valiant little woman, but there would have
been something unnatural, almost uncanny, about her had the regal calm
and religious seriousness which marked her mien during those imposing
rites, continued indefinitely, and it is right pleasant to read in the
reminiscences of Leslie, how the child in her broke out when all the
magnificent but tiresome parade, all the grand stage-business with those
heavy actors, was over. The painter says: "She is very fond of dogs, and
has one favorite little spaniel, who is always on the lookout for her
return when she is from home. She had, of course, been separated from him
on that day longer than usual, and when the state-coach drove up to the
Palace steps she heard him barking joyously in the hall, and exclaimed,