There is a slight parting of her rosy lips, between which you can see
little nicks of something like very white teeth. The expression of her
face is amiable and good-tempered. I could see nothing like that awful
majesty, that mysterious something which doth hedge a queen.'

Mr Greville, who dined at the Queen's table in Buckingham Palace in 1837,
pronounced the whole thing dull, so dull that he marvelled how any one
could like such a life: but both here and at a ball he declared the
bearing of the Queen to be perfect, noting also that her complexion was
clear, and that the expression of her eyes was agreeable.

Despite her strong attraction to her cousin Albert, she expressed a
determination not to think of marriage for a time. The sudden change from
her quiet, girlish life in Kensington to the prominence and the powers of
a great queen, standing 'in that fierce light which beats upon a throne,'
might well have excused a good deal of wilfulness had the excuse been
needed.

Her Majesty decides that 'a worse school for a young girl, or one more
detrimental to all natural feelings and affections, cannot well be
imagined.' Perhaps it was an experience which she needed to convince her
fully of the value and blessedness of the true domesticity which was soon
to be hers. After she had in 1837 placed her life-interest in the
hereditary revenues of the crown at the disposal of the House of Commons,
her yearly income was fixed at L385,000. This income is allocated as
follows: For Her Majesty's privy purse, L60,000; salaries of Her Majesty's
household and retired allowances, L131,260; expenses of household,
L172,500; royal bounty, alms, &c., L13,200; unappropriated moneys, L8040.

The first change from a Whig to a Conservative government ruffled the