It will strike the reader, however, oddly enough, after perusing the grave account which Mr. Buchanan has given of his reasons for accepting the mission, and the nature of the topics on which he was to negotiate, that while the conferences were going on between him and Lord Clarendon on the subjects which had brought him to London, he had to encounter a question of court etiquette. The story would hardly be worth repetition now, if it were not for the amusing _finale_ of the whole affair. It may be introduced with a little preface. On the accession of Queen Victoria, at the early age of eighteen, the Duke of Wellington is said to have drily remarked, that the Tories would have little chance under a female sovereign, since he had no small-talk and Peel had no manners.[12] The Tories did not find it so in the sequel, for although, when the Whigs had to go out of power, in 1841, and the Queen had to part with her first official advisers, it cost her a rather severe personal struggle,—inasmuch as she is said to have written a very unconstitutional note to her old friend, Lord Melbourne, lamenting that “the sad, the too sad day has come at last,”[13]—yet, so wise and faithful had been the political education which that minister had given to his young sovereign, that at the very first necessity she gracefully yielded her personal feelings to her public duty, and made it certain that personal government, independent of the will of Parliament, had passed away forever from the public affairs of England. From that time forward, it seems to have been the accepted doctrine of the British constitution, that the sovereign is not merely a state pageant, but is a magistrate raised above the feelings or interests of party, with a function to perform in the State, which comprehends the right to be consulted on every question or measure, to offer advice, and to give a real as well as a formal assent, although bound at all times to receive as ministers those who can command the confidence for the time being of the House of Commons. And well and wisely has the woman whose reign has now extended to the very unusual period of forty-six years fulfilled this function of a constitutional sovereign. But her Majesty has long had the reputation of being very rigid in matters of court etiquette and ceremonial. The truth probably is, that at the commencement of her reign, the necessity for giving to the manners of the court a very different tone from that which had existed in the time of the late king, her uncle,—a necessity which coincided with her tastes as a lady, and her sense of what was becoming in her position,—had brought about a good deal that was regarded by strangers, and by some of her own subjects, as an unnecessary observance of punctilio. The officials of the court, whose duty it was to attend to these matters, very likely carried them farther than the queen’s wishes or commands required. At all events, the sequel of Mr.