That she has achieved much in this direction is undoubted, and it is also undoubted that she has achieved it mainly by the absolute sincerity of her own character, and by its spontaneous power of distinguishing between the false and the true, the noble and the ignoble. With all the temptations of her position, the possession of almost unlimited power from girlhood, she has chosen to live simply and to live laboriously; with everything before her that wealth could offer in the way of pleasure, she has never found her amusements in pursuits that bring to others sorrow and misery. She has ever been the true woman, and because a true woman therefore a great Queen. In the earlier chapters of this little book an attempt was made to indicate the formative influences on the Queen’s character, and a chief place was given, in this connection, to Baron Stockmar and to the Prince Consort. The bed-rock of the character of all three is the value they put on Love and Duty. Stockmar, towards the close of his life, wrote:-- “Were I now to be asked by any young man just entering into life, ‘What is the chief good for which it behooves a man to strive?’ my only answer would be, ‘Love and Friendship!’ Were he to ask me, ‘What is a man’s most priceless possession?’ I must answer, ‘The consciousness of having loved and sought the truth, of having yearned for the truth for its own sake!’ All else is either vanity or a sick man’s dream.” With a similar unconscious self-revelation, the Prince Consort wrote to his eldest daughter, almost immediately after her marriage, counselling her not to think of herself, but to think of duty and service. “If,” he said, “you have succeeded in winning people’s hearts by friendliness, simplicity, and courtesy, the secret lay in this, that you were not thinking of yourself. Hold fast this mystic power; it is a spark from heaven.” The Queen’s nature was full of responsive sympathy with these “spirits finely touched to fine issues.” In her correspondence she too gives her conception of the secret of happiness. Characteristically enough, she finds her illustration in the person of her husband, and says how people are struck, not only by his great power and energy, but also by his great self-denial, and constant wish to work for others. And “this,” adds the Queen, “is the happiest life. Pining for what one cannot have, and trying to run after what is pleasantest, invariably end in disappointment.” This is the spirit which has enabled Her Majesty to fill her great position so worthily, and to have been, therefore, of untold service to the country she has loved so well. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF EVENTS. 1819. Birth of Princess Victoria at Kensington Palace, May 24th. 1820. Death of Duke of Kent.--Death of George III.--Accession of George IV.--Trial of Queen Caroline begun in House of Lords in October; abandoned in November. 1822. Suicide of Lord Londonderry (Castlereagh).--Canning becomes Foreign Secretary.