Princess Victoria and her preparation for the difficult and responsible position she was afterwards to occupy. The quarrels and disputes that constantly arose between the Duchess of Kent and William IV. may have been attributable to faults on both sides; but the most innocent and indeed laudable actions of the Duchess, with regard to her daughter’s training, seem to have been made the excuse for all kinds of complaint and acrimony on the part of the King. For instance, the Duchess felt that it was proper that her daughter, in view of the position she would hereafter occupy, should see as much as possible of the places of interest and importance in the kingdom she would be destined in time to reign over. Accordingly, she took the young Princess about to the chief manufacturing centres, as well as to places of historic interest, and localities where the rural beauty of England was to be seen in its greatest perfection. In this way she visited Birmingham, Worcester, Coventry, Shrewsbury, Chester, Lichfield, and Oxford, as well as Malvern, Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, Kenilworth, Powis Castle, Wynnstay, Anglesey, and the Isle of Wight. It appears, however, that these apparently praiseworthy proceedings gave great offence at Court. The Duchess was supposed to seek more attention than her position justified her in demanding. A Council was summoned at Windsor on one occasion (in 1833) for the sole purpose of checking the manifestations of loyalty which the appearance of the Duchess and her daughter provoked. The King was devoured by spleen on hearing that salutes had been fired at the Isle of Wight in honor of these progresses of the heiress-presumptive and her mother. After absurd negotiations on the subject between the King and his sister-in-law, when neither had the good grace to give way, the fleet was commanded, by Order in Council, not to salute the Royal Standard unless the King or Queen was on board. On another occasion, offence seems to have been taken by the King where none was intended, because an address, received by the Duchess in 1835 at Burghley, alluded to her daughter as “destined to mount the throne of these realms.” It was an additional offence that Sir John Conroy, the Duchess’s controller of the household, “handed the answer, just as the Prime Minister does to the King.” With every action, even on the part of others, thus misinterpreted, it was no wonder that the Duchess could have no cordial feelings towards her husband’s family. George IV. openly showed his dislike for her, the Duke of Cumberland never lost an opportunity of aggravating the unfriendliness of their relations. When William IV. succeeded, the Duchess of Kent wrote to the Duke of Wellington, as Prime Minister, to request that she might be treated as a Dowager Princess of Wales, with an income suitable for herself and her daughter, for whom she also asked recognition as heiress to the throne. These requests met with a positive refusal, at