As a matter of course, Lord Melbourne became the Queen's instructor in the duties of her position, and as she had no private secretary, he had to be in constant attendance upon her--to see her, not only daily, but sometimes three or four times a day. The Queen has given her testimony to the unwearied kindness and pleasantness, the disinterested regard for her welfare, even the generous fairness to political opponents, with which her Prime Minister discharged his task. It seems as if the great trust imposed on him drew out all that was most manly and chivalrous in a character which, along with much that was fine and attractive, that won to him all who came in close contact with him, was not without the faults of the typical aristocrat, correctly or incorrectly defined by the popular imagination. Lord Melbourne, with his sense and spirit, honesty and good-nature, could be haughtily, indifferent, lazily self-indulgent, scornfully careless even to affectation, of the opinions of his social inferiors, as when he appeared to amuse himself with "idly blowing a feather or nursing a sofa-cushion while receiving an important and perhaps highly sensitive deputation from this or that commercial interest." The time has come when it is fully recognised that whatever might have been Lord Melbourne's defects, he never brought them into his relations with the Queen. To her he was the frank, sincere, devoted adviser of all that it was wisest and best for her to do. "He does not appear to have been greedy of power, or to have used any unfair means of getting or keeping it. The character of the young Sovereign seems to have impressed him deeply. His real or affected levity gave way to a genuine and lasting desire to make her life as happy and her reign as successful as he could. The Queen always felt the warmest affection and gratitude for him, and showed it long after the public had given up the suspicion that she could be a puppet in the hands of a Minister. "But men--especially Lord Melbourne's political adversaries--were not sufficiently large-minded and large-hearted to put this confidence in him beforehand. They remembered with wrath and disgust that, even in the language of men of the world, "his morals were not supposed to be very strict." He had been unhappy in his family life. The eccentricities and follies of Lady Caroline Lamb had formed the gossip of several London seasons long years before. Other scandals had gathered round his name, and though they had been to some extent disproven, it was indignantly asked, could there be a more unsuitable and undesirable guide for an innocent royal girl of eighteen than this accomplished, bland _roue_ of threescore? Should he be permitted to soil--were it but in thought--the lily of whose stainlessness the nation was so proud? The result proved that Lord Melbourne could be a blameless, worthy servant to his Sovereign.