This year 1837, Victoria spent her first Christmas as a Queen at Windsor, right royally I doubt not, and I think it probable she received a few presents. A few days before, she had gone in state to Parliament, to give her assent to the New Civil List Act-not a hard duty for her to perform, it would seem, as that act settled on her for life an annual income of £385,000. Let Americans who begrudge our President his $50,000, and wail over our taxation, just put that sum into dollars. The English people did not grumble at this grant, as they had grumbled over the large sums demanded by Her Majesty's immediate predecessors. They knew it would not be recklessly and wickedly squandered, and they liked to have their bonnie young Queen make a handsome appearance among crowned heads. She had not then revealed those strong and admirable traits of character which later won their respect and affection,--but they were fond of her, and took a sort of amused delight in her, as though they, were all children, and she a wonderful new doll, with new-fashioned talking and walking arrangements. The friend from whom I have quoted--Mrs. Crosland-- writes me: "I consider that it would be impossible to exaggerate the enthusiasm of the English people on the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne. To be able at all to understand it, we must recollect the sovereigns she succeeded--the Sailor-King, a most commonplace old man, with 'a head like a pine-apple'; George IV., a most unkingly king, extremely unpopular, except with a small party, of High Tories; and poor George III., who by the generation Victoria followed, could only be remembered as a frail, afflicted, blind old man--for a long period shut up at Kew, and never seen by his people. It was not only that Victoria was a really lovely girl, but that she had the _prestige_ of having been brought up as a Liberal, and then she kept the hated Duke of Cumberland from the throne. Possibly he was not guilty of half the atrocious sins attributed to him, but I do not remember any royal personage so universally hated."