Life of Her Majesty Queen VictoriaFawcett, Millicent Garrett, Dame
Philosophy
Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria
Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, Dame
Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 1819-1901
“In short, she appears to act with every sort of good taste and good
feeling, as well as good sense; and, as far as it has gone, nothing
can be more favorable than the impression she has made, and nothing
can promise better than her manner and conduct do, though it would
be rash to count too confidently upon her judgment and discretion in
more weighty matters. No contrast can be greater than that between
the personal demeanor of the present and the late Sovereigns at their
respective accessions. William IV. was a man who, coming to the throne
at the mature age of sixty-five, was so excited by the exaltation
that he nearly went mad, and distinguished himself by a thousand
extravagances of language and conduct to the alarm or amusement of
all who witnessed his strange freaks.... The young Queen, who might
well be either dazzled or confounded with the grandeur and novelty of
her situation, seems neither the one nor the other, and behaves with
a decorum and propriety beyond her years, and with all the sedateness
and dignity, the want of which was so conspicuous in her uncle.”
In this vivid personal description by an eye-witness we see in the
grave dignity of the young girl the same dutiful child who, at eleven
years old, had said, when she learned her future destiny, “There is
much splendor, but there is more responsibility,” and, lifting her
little hand, added, “I will be good.”
Greville describes the impression made by the young Queen within
the Palace upon her Ministers and servants. Miss Martineau, another
contemporary, describes the impression produced outside the Palace,
on the crowd in the streets who came to witness the ceremony of the
proclamation. She refers to the intense joy of whatever was sound
and wholesome in the nation, that the ill-doing sons of George III.
no longer occupied the throne, and that it was filled instead by a
young girl, prudent, virtuous, and conscientious, reared in health,
simplicity, and purity. She says even exaggerated hopes were awakened
by the change; people seemed to expect that the fact of having a
virtuous Sovereign, strong in the energies of youth, was in itself a
guarantee that all was to go well: “That the Lords were to work well
with the Commons, the people were to be educated, everybody was to have
employment and food, all reforms were to be carried through, and she
herself would never do anything wrong or make any mistakes.”
Those who represented that it was an injustice to the Queen to expect
her to work miracles--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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