waters a little. Her Majesty was advised by the Duke of Wellington to
invite Sir Robert Peel to form a new ministry. She did so, but frankly
told Peel that she was very sorry to lose Lord Melbourne. When arranging
his cabinet, Sir Robert found that objections were raised to the retention
of certain Whig ladies in personal attendance upon the Queen, as being
very likely to influence her. The Duchess of Sutherland and Lady Normanby,
it is believed, were particularly meant. The Queen at first flatly refused
to dismiss her Ladies of the Bedchamber, to whom she had got so
accustomed. As Sir Robert Peel would not yield the point, she recalled
Lord Melbourne, who now retained office till 1841. The affair caused a
great deal of talk in political and non-political circles. The Queen
wrote: 'They wanted to deprive me of my ladies, and I suppose they would
deprive me next of my dresses and my housemaids; but I will show them that
I am Queen of England.' This little episode has since gone by the name of
the 'Bedchamber Plot.'

Of Her Majesty it may safely be said that she has always been a genuine
ruler, in the sense that from the first she trained herself to comprehend
the mysteries of statecraft. She had Lord Melbourne as her first
prime-minister, and from the beginning every despatch of the Foreign
Office was offered to her attention. In 1848, a year of exceptional
activity, these numbered 28,000.

If for a while the Queen thus drew back from actually deciding to marry
the cousin whom, nevertheless, she owned to be 'fascinating,' that cousin
on his side was not one of those of whom it may be said:

He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch,