Stockmar, who had watched the Queen from childhood, wrote of her in 1847: "The Queen improves greatly. She makes daily advances in discernment and experience; the candour, the love of truth, the fairness, the considerateness with which she judges men and things are truly delightful, and the ingenuous self-knowledge with which she speaks about herself is amiable to a degree." Of that rare quality of ingenuousness I saw many illustrations. Thus, for example, how few would be ready to make so frank a confession as to any portion of their past lives as this, in a letter to me (February 18, 1869), which Her Majesty gave as a reason why she could not send, for the purpose of the Prince's biography, her letters during the first years after her accession:-- "OSBORNE, _Feb. 18, 1869_. "The Queen's own letters between 1837 and 1840 are not pleasing, and are, indeed, rather painful to herself. It was the least sensible and satisfactory time in her whole life, and she must therefore destroy a great many. That life of constant amusement, flattery, excitement, and mere politics had a bad effect (as it must have upon any one) on her naturally simple and serious nature. But all changed in 1840 [with her marriage]." The Queen's candour and love of truth, too, made her impatient at being praised where praise was not due, especially where praise should have been given to the Prince Consort. Thus she writes to Lord John Russell (November 18, 1860), on reading in a Cape journal a speech of Sir George Grey's extolling the nature of the education given to her eldest sons: "She feels, she must say, _pained_ at such constant praise of _her_ education of our sons, when it is _all_ due to the Prince, and when his untiring and indefatigable exertions for our children's good is the chief, indeed sole, cause of the success which till now has attended our efforts.... The praise so constantly given to the Queen, and the popularity she enjoys, she knows and feels are due, in a great measure, to the guidance and assistance of the Prince, to be whose wife she considers so great a privilege, and she feels it almost wrong when praise is given to _her_ for what she knows _he_ deserves."