In these intimate records, written by the girl Queen herself, we see that Lord Melbourne early decided never to treat his Royal mistress as a child. When she asked him a question he evidently answered her truthfully; and she must have asked him many questions concerning that group of princes and princesses who, even then, were already known as the "Old Royal Family." They were Queen Victoria's own aunts and uncles; and over those who were still living when she came to the throne she possessed, as Sovereign, very peculiar and extended powers. It was inevitable that they should play a considerable part, if not in her life, certainly in her imagination; and yet we hardly ever find them mentioned in the work she directly supervised and inspired--the life of the Prince Consort. Her fear, her contempt, her horror, of the way they had conducted their lives, her dread lest even their innocent follies, and their sad tragedies of the heart, should be repeated in the lives of her own sons and daughters, were perhaps only revealed to trusted friends in her old age. It may even be doubted if Queen Victoria ever communicated to Prince Albert certain of the facts which had necessarily to be made known to her. Whether she did so or not, the course she very early set herself to pursue--a course, be it remembered, in which she persisted at a time when she seemed to lack courage and energy to go on even with life itself, that is during the years that immediately succeeded the Prince Consort's death--proved how determined she was to secure that the lives of her children should be entirely different from those of their great-uncles and great-aunts. That her daughters, and later her grand-daughters, should marry early, and make marriages of inclination; that her sons' wives should be chosen among princesses young, charming, sympathetic, and personally attractive to each prince concerned--this was one of Queen Victoria's chief and most anxious preoccupations. She may have tried to guide inclination, she undoubtedly tried to arrange suitable alliances, but in no single case did she ever seriously oppose a marriage based on strong attraction. In that matter Queen Victoria was a typical Englishwoman. To her mind, a union between a young man and a young woman based on any other foundation save strong mutual love and confidence, was vile; and all through her life she wished ardently to ensure that those marital blessings which fall comparatively often on ordinary people, but comparatively seldom on members of the Royal caste, should be the lot of her immediate descendants.