“I generally drive out with my brother,” she writes. “He goes out, and stays out till the lamps are well lighted, when we come in; to-day the dear Queen is gone with him, so I may remain quiet.” Political feeling still ran high, but Princess Elizabeth confessed to hating politics. “I had rather talk of winter potatoes, though a very mealy subject.” In 1833, being over sixty, she realised that she was growing old. “I am still from all accounts a fine old lady,” she remarks. “My looking-glass tells me at times rather tall, and I say to you with truth that no one enjoys more their old age than me, and am convinced that I have been a much happier being since the spring and summer of life are over--so many things I do and can do without bearing anything unpleasant.” She was able even to wear a winter tippet which her sister Augusta presented. “I look like a bear in it; but what signifies looks when health is in question?” As time passed, Elizabeth had other reminders that she was growing old. “I blush to think how often I am late of a morning, which is not like me, but my poor legs require time,” she writes in November, 1833. “First I read my serious readings, then write, and do what business I must do, and of late I have had a good deal of what I call parish business, settling work for the poor and trying to content them if possible.” She seems to have cultivated her mind in a wholesome way without harbouring any foolish ambitions. “I have taught myself to see everything with pleasure and without envy,” she remarks, and added later, “Without religion there can be no peace, no order, no blessing.” The Princess was struck with the excess of luxury in England in 1836. “More jewels and more extravagance than ever.” It was then that she saw the last of her brother William IV., whose death in the following year she sincerely deplored. Elizabeth thus survived to see the opening of the present reign; but she belonged too much to a former age and to a different order of things to have much sympathy with the new and more promising outlook of the Victorian era. The memorial volume which Mr. Yorke has so well edited is of considerable interest and of permanent value. G. H. P. [2] _Letters of Princess Elizabeth of England_, daughter of George III., and Landgravine of Hesse-Homburg. Written for the most part to Miss Louisa Swinburne. Edited by Philip Ch. Yorke, M.A., with portraits. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1898. VARIETIES. HE THREW AWAY THE STONE. The haughty favourite of an oriental monarch once in the public street threw a stone at a poor dervish or priest. The dervish did not dare to throw it back at the man who had assaulted him, for he knew the favourite was very powerful. So he picked up the stone and put it carefully in his pocket, saying to himself: “The time for revenge will come by-and-by, and then I will repay him for it.”