great Marquis of Normanby came on a visit of sympathy and gratulation to the new sovereign, the Queen, at an awkward pause, piped out, in her sweet voice: “It’s a fine day, Marquis!” Whereat the courtier, who was more full of dainty speech, said--in pretty recognition of its being the first day of her reign--“Your Majesty must allow me to say that it’s the finest day I ever saw in my life!” But this good Queen was full of charities, always beloved, and never failed to show that best mark of real ladyhood--the utmost courtesy and kindliness of manner to dependants and to her servants. _An Irish Dragoon._ Among the writers specially identified with this Queen’s reign was Sir Richard Steele;[99] not a grand man, or one of large influence; and yet one so kindly by nature, and so gracious in his speech and writing, that the world is not yet done with pardoning, and loving, and pitying that elegant author of the _Tatler_--though he was an awful spendthrift, and a fashionable tippler, and a creature of always splendid, and always broken, promises. He was Irish born; was schooled at the Charter-house in London, where he met with that other master of delicate English, Joseph Addison--they being not far from the same age--and knitting a boy friendship there which withstood a great many shocks of manhood. They were together at Oxford, too, but not long; for Steele, somehow, slipped College early and became a trooper, and learned all the ways of the fast fellows of the town. With such a training--on the road to which his Irish blood led him with great jollity--one would hardly have looked to him for any early talk about the life of a true _Christian Hero_. But he did write a book so entitled, in those wild young days, as a sort of kedge anchor, he says, whereby he might haul out from the shoals of the wicked town, and indulge in a sort of contemplative piety. It was and is a very good little book;[100] but it did not hold a bit, as an anchor. And when he came to be joked about his Christian Heroship, he wrote plays (perhaps to make averages good) more moral and cleanly than those of Etherege or Wycherley--with bright things in them; but not enough of such, or of orderly proprieties, to keep them popular. Of course, this fun-loving, dusky, good-hearted, broad-shouldered Irish trooper falls in love easily; marries, too, of a sudden, some West Indian lady, who dies within a year, leaving him a Barbadoes estate--said to be large--does look large to Captain Steele through his cups--but which gives greater anxieties than profits, and is a sort of castle in Spain all through his life. With almost incredible despatch--after this affliction--he is in love again; this time with the only daughter of a rich Welsh lady. This is his famous Prue, who plays the coquette with him for a while; but writes privily to her anxious mamma that she “can _never, never_ love another;” that “he is not high--nor rich--but so dutiful; and