Save the Queen" was sung, after which her Majesty rose and bowed repeatedly
with marked goodwill.... The common crier then shouted, "Her Majesty gives
the Lord Mayor and Prosperity to the City of London." Bishop's "When the
Wind Blows" was sung. The only other toast was, "The Royal Family," given
by the Lord Mayor.

At half-past eight her Majesty's carriage was announced. The weather was
unpleasant, the streets were unusually dirty, but a vast crowd once more
greeted her. On arriving at the end of Cheapside, she was hailed out of the
glimmering illumination and foggy lamplight by "God Save the Queen," again
sung by many hundred voices, accompanied by a band of wind instruments, the
performance of the Harmonic Society, and the music was followed all the way
by enthusiastic cheering. The Baroness Bunsen remarked of such a scene long
afterwards, "I was at a loss to conceive how any woman's sides can 'bear
the beating of so strong a throb' as must attend the consciousness of being
the object of all that excitement, and the centre of attraction for all
those eyes. But the Queen has royal strength of nerve." Not so much
strength of nerve, we should say, as strength of single-heartedness and
simple sense of duty which are their own reward, together with the
comparative immunity produced by long habit.

Still it is a little relief to turn from so much State and strain to a
brief glimpse of the girl-Queen in something like the privacy of domestic
life. In the month of November, 1837, the Attorney-General, Lord Campbell,
with his wife, Lady Stratheden, received an invitation to Buckingham
Palace, to dine with her Majesty at seven, and one of the guests wrote thus
of the entertainment: "I went, and found it exceedingly agreeable, although
by no means so grand as dining at Tarvit with Mrs. Rigg. The little Queen
was exceedingly kind to me, and said she had heard from the Duchess of
Gloucester that I had the most beautiful children in the world. She asked