dozen closely written quarto pages, seemed only natural. I therefore turned from them to the draft bill, and long professional experience in the study of similar documents made it easy for me to furnish Her Majesty with the information desired, for which I presently received a gracious acknowledgment, with the happy assurance that she now saw her way clearly to deal with the measure proposed. This incident, long forgotten, was recalled to my mind on reading the statement made with an air of assured knowledge,[7] that the Queen's "prejudice" against Mr Gladstone began from her "suspecting him of trying to overwork her." I have the best reason to know the groundlessness of this imputation. The Queen's distrust of Mr Gladstone--not her "prejudice" against him--was of a much earlier date than his first Premiership. It was deeply seated, and for reasons that grew more and more serious as the years rolled on. But this is a matter with which the future chronicler of the Queen's Life may be left to deal. Instead of complaining that she was overtasked by Mr Gladstone, Her Majesty's complaint more probably was, that she was not kept fully and timeously informed by him of important matters to which she conceived her attention should have been called. However this may be, the Queen was too fair-minded to allow "prejudice" to warp her judgment as to any of her Ministers; but her intuitively searching glance, her unfailing memory and long experience, would instinctively lead her to make of their characters a penetrating and conscientiously careful study. It seems like egotism to quote the following letter, but it shows better than anything I could write the position in relation to Her Majesty which, I scarcely know how, I had very early come to occupy. "BALMORAL, _5th June 1869_. "The Queen has received Mr Martin's _most_ kind letter of the 3rd.... She really is at a loss to say how much she feels his constant and invariable kindness to her, and how deeply grateful she is for it. In the Queen's position, though it might sound strange, as she has so many to serve her, she feels the assistance rendered her by others in private matters, in which her official servants, from one cause or another, seem to feel little interest and to be very helpless, is of immense value; and she considers it _most fortunate_, to say the least, to have found so kind a friend as Mr Martin. The Queen likewise feels that in him she has found an impartial friend, who can tell her many important things which her own unbiassed servants cannot hear or tell her. This the Queen mentioned to Mr Martin the other day when she saw him at Windsor, when she alluded to the loss of Baron Stockmar."