shops, and for the heir to such a crown as that of England, quite unnecessarily pretty and interesting."
Carlyle, in a private letter to his brother (April, 1838), gave a vivid picture of the girl-Queen as he saw her then:—
"Going through the Green Park yesterday, I saw her little Majesty taking her … departure for Windsor. I had seen her another day at Hyde Park Corner coming in from the daily ride. She is decidedly a pretty-looking little creature: health, clearness, graceful timidity, looking out from her young face, 'frail cockle on the black bottomless deluges.' One could not help some interest in her, situated as mortal seldom was."
Writing of a later period, Baroness Bunsen, describing the scene in the House of Lords at the opening of Parliament in 1842, says:—
"The opening of Parliament was the thing from which I expected most, and I was not disappointed. The throngs in the streets, in the windows, in every place people could stand upon, all looking so pleased; the splendid Horse Guards, the Grenadiers of the Guard … the Yeomen of the Body-Guard. Then in the House of Lords, the Peers in their robes, the beautifully dressed ladies with many very beautiful faces; lastly, the procession of the Queen's entry, and herself, looking worthy and fit to be the converging point of so many rays of grandeur. It is self-evident that she is not tall, but were she ever so tall, she could not have more grace and dignity. … The composure with which she filled the throne while awaiting the Commons I much admired; it was a test—no fidget, no apathy. Then her voice and enunciation cannot be more perfect. In short, it cannot be said that she did well, but that she was the Queen—she was and felt herself to be the descendant of her ancestors."
These last words exactly describe Her Majesty's bearing in age as well as in youth; and it is this, her intellectual grasp of the situation she fills as the highest officer of the State and the wearer of the crown of the Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts, that renders her dignity so entirely independent of mere trappings and finery. It has been remarked that on the occasion of her public appearances, the Queen may have been the worst-dressed lady present, and have had by her side or in the immediate background a
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