friend, the fire-lighter, is extremely like Peter Powell, only a size
larger. He also greatly admires the picture; he confesses he knows nothing
about the robes, and can't say whether they are like or not, but he
pronounces the Queen's likeness excellent." [Footnote: Leslie's
Autobiography.]



CHAPTER VI.
THE MAIDEN QUEEN.


When the great event of the coronation was over the Queen was left to
fulfil the heavy demands of business and the concluding gaieties of the
season. It comes upon us with a little pathetic shock, to think of one whom
we have long known chiefly in the chastened light of the devoted unflagging
worker at her high calling, of our lady of sorrows, as a merry
girl--girl-like in her fondness, in spite of her noble nature and the
serious claims she did not neglect, of a racket of perpetual excitement. We
read of her as going everywhere, as the blithest and most indefatigable
dancer in her ball-room, dancing out a pair of slippers before the night
was over; we hear how reluctant she was to leave town, how eager to return
to it.

Inevitably the old and dear friends most interested in her welfare were now
regarding this critical period in the Queen's career with anxious eyes. In
looking back upon it in after life, she has frankly and gravely
acknowledged its pitfalls; "a worse school for a young girl, or one more
detrimental to all natural feeling and affection, cannot well be imagined,
than the position of a queen at eighteen, without experience, and without a