To the same period belong those _Tracts for the Times_, in which John Keble, the honored author of the _Christian Year_, came to new notice, while his associates, Dr. Pusey and Cardinal Newman, gave utterance to speech which is not without reverberating echoes, even now. Nor was it long after this date that British journalism received a great lift, and a great broadening of its forces, by a reduction of the stamp-tax--largely due to the efforts of Bulwer Lytton--whereby British newspapers increased their circulation, within two years, by 20,000,000 annually.[83] All these things had come about in the reign of William IV.; but to none of them had he given any enthusiastic approval, or any such urgence of attention as would have dislocated a single one of his royal dinners. In 1837 he died--not very largely sighed over; least of all by that sister-in-law, the Duchess of Kent, whom he had hated for her starched proprieties, whom he had insulted again and again, and who now, in her palace of Kensington, prepared her daughter Victoria for her entrance upon the sovereignty. _Her Majesty Victoria._ The girl was only eighteen--well taught, discreet, and modest. Greville tells us that she was consumed with blushes when her uncles of Sussex and of Cumberland came, with the royal council, to kneel before her, and to kiss her hand in token of the new allegiance. The old king had died at two o’clock of the morning; and by eleven o’clock on the same day the duties of royalty had begun for the young queen, in receiving the great officers of state. Among the others she meets on that first regal day in Kensington Palace, are Lansdowne, the fidgety Lord Brougham, the courtly Sir Robert Peel, and the spare, trim-looking old Duke of Wellington, who is charmed by her gracious manner, and by her self-control and dignity. He said he could not have been more proud of her if she had been his own daughter. Nearer to the young queen than all these--by old ties of friendship, that always remained unshaken--was the suave and accomplished Lord Melbourne--First Minister--who has prepared the queen’s little speech for her, which she reads with charming self-possession; to him, too, she looks for approval and instruction in all her progress through the new ceremonials of Court, and the ordering of a royal household. And Melbourne is admirably suited to that task; he was not a great statesman; was never an orator, but possessed of all the arts of conciliation--adroit and full of tact, yet kindly, sympathetic, and winning. Not by any means a man beyond reproach in his private life, but bringing to those new offices of political guardianship to the young queen only the soundest good-sense and the wisest of advice--thus inspiring in her a trust that was never forfeited.