"Oh, there is no royal road to music, eh? No royal road? And I am not mistress of my pianoforte? But I will be, I assure you; and the royal road is this"--at the same time closing the piano, locking it, and taking the key--"There! that's being mistress of the piano! and the royal road to learning is, never to take a lesson till you're in the humour to do it." After the laugh which her joke had provoked in herself and others had subsided, she at once volunteered to resume the lesson. We cannot more fitly conclude this chapter, ere we proceed to travel an important stage further in our attempt to trace the youthful days of the Queen, than by presenting a picture of her, as she appeared at this period of her life to the genial eyes of Leigh Hunt, to whom we have been already indebted at the commencement of this chapter:-- We remember well the peculiar kind of personal pleasure which it gave us to see the future Queen, the first time we ever did see her, coming up a cross path from the Bayswater Gate, with a girl of her own age by her side, whose hand she was holding, as if she loved her. It brought to our mind the warmth of our own juvenile friendships, and made us fancy that she loved everything else that we had loved in like measure--books, trees, verses, Arabian tales, and the good mother who had helped to make her so affectionate. A magnificent footman, in scarlet, came behind her, with the splendidest pair of calves, in white stockings, that we had ever beheld. He looked somehow like a gigantic fairy, personating, for his little lady's sake, the grandest footman he could think of; and his calves he seemed to have made out of a couple of the biggest chaise-lamps in the possession of the godmother of Cinderella. As the Princess grew up, the world seemed never to hear of her except as it wished to hear--that is to say, in connection with her mother; and now it never hears of her but in connection with children of her own, and her husband, and her mother still [this was written in 1855], and all good household pleasures and hospitalities, and public virtues of a piece with them. May life ever continue to appear to her what, indeed, it really is to all who have eyes for seeing beyond the surface--namely, a wondrous fairy scene, strange, beautiful, mournful too, yet hopeful of being "happy ever after," when its story is over; and wise, meantime, in seeing much where others see nothing, in shedding its tears patiently, and in doing its best to diminish the tears around it. CHAPTER V. EDUCATION OF THE PRINCESS VICTORIA.