correctness and judiciousness, at the early age of fifteen, that when the
said letter fell, by an extraordinary train of circumstances, into the
hands of young King George, he determined there and then to make that
painstaking and sensible Princess, and no other, a happy wife and great
Queen. There was no strict need for the story, and yet as a gentle
stimulant it may have been administered.

Queen Victoria was educated, as far as possible, in the simple habits and
familiarity with nature which belongs to the best and happiest training of
any child, whatever her rank. There is a pleasant picture in Knight's
"Passages of a Working Life": "I delighted to walk in Kensington Gardens
in the early summer, on my way to town.... In such a season, when the sun
was scarcely high enough to have dried up the dews of Kensington's green
alleys, as I passed along the broad central walk I saw a group on the lawn
before the palace, which, to my mind, was a vision of exquisite
loveliness. The Duchess of Kent and her daughter, whose years then
numbered nine, are breakfasting in the open air, a single page attending
on them at a respectful distance, the mother looking on with eyes of love,
while the fair, soft, English face is bright with smiles. The world of
fashion is not yet astir. Clerks and mechanics passing onwards to their
occupations are few, and they exhibit nothing of vulgar curiosity."

We have another charming description, by Leigh Hunt, of a glimpse which he
had of Princess Victoria in these gardens: "We remember well the peculiar
kind of personal pleasure which it gave us to see the future Queen, the
first time we ever did see her, coming up a cross-path from the Bayswater
Gate, with a girl of her own age by her side, whose hand she was holding
as if she loved her. It brought to our minds the warmth of our own
juvenile friendships, and made us fancy that she loved everything else
that we had loved in like measure--books, trees, verses, Arabian tales,