The Duchess of Kent made the suitable education of her child the one absorbing object of her life; and she seems to have realized that education does not consist in merely learning facts or acquiring accomplishments, but should also aim at forming the character and disciplining the whole nature, so that it may acquire conscientiousness and the strength which comes from self-government. Keeping this end ever in view, and aided, no doubt, by a responsiveness in the child’s own nature, the little Princess was trained in those habits of strict personal integrity which are the only unfailing safeguard for truthfulness and fundamental honesty in regard to money and other possessions. All observers who have been brought into personal relationship with the Queen speak of her as possessing one of the most transparently truthful natures they have ever known. The Right Hon. John Bright, with his Quaker-bred traditions as to literal exactitude in word and deed, said that this was the trait in her character of which he carried away the most vivid impression. An anecdote is given in “The Life of Bishop Wilberforce,” illustrative of the Queen’s truthfulness as a child. Dr. Davys, Bishop of Peterborough, formerly preceptor to Princess Victoria, told Dr. Wilberforce that when he was teaching her, one day the little Princess was very anxious that the lesson should be over, and was rather troublesome. The Duchess of Kent came in and asked how she had behaved. Baroness Lehzen, the governess, replied that once she had been rather naughty. The Princess touched her and said, “No, Lehzen, _twice_; don’t you remember?” The financial side of truthfulness is honesty; and here again the Queen has instituted a new order of things in English royalty. We are so accustomed to the sway of a Sovereign who regards it as dishonest to owe more than she is ready and willing to pay, that we have almost forgotten that this was very far from being the case with her predecessors. Even the highly respectable Prince Leopold could not live within his income of £50,000 a year, and was £83,000 in debt when he became King of the Belgians in 1831.