The numerous children of the late King resigned into her hands their various appointments, and the pensions that had been allowed them. She accepted these resignations to show her right to do so, and afterwards reappointed them, behaving with the greatest kindness and liberality. Greville speaks over and over again of the remarkable union she presented of womanly sympathy, girlish _naïveté_, and queenly dignity. He says every one who was about her was warmly attached to her, “but that all feel the impossibility of for a moment losing sight of the respect which they owe her. She never ceases to be a queen, but is always the most charming, cheerful, obliging, unaffected queen in the world.” The tears which she shed at her proclamation were due to the intense emotion awakened by her position; they by no means betokened a morbid or hysterical temperament. The records of the early years of the Queen’s reign constantly speak of her gayety and good spirits. At her coronation, in 1838, she is said to have looked as radiant as a girl on her birthday. The demise of the Crown necessitated a dissolution of Parliament. A general election took place in August, 1837, in which the Whigs were again returned to power, but by a reduced majority. Lord Melbourne was again Prime Minister, and continued to act as the Queen’s chief adviser and counsellor, not only in public affairs, but also on every personal matter in which she felt she needed the advice of an experienced man of the world. There were some who regretted the Queen’s extreme reliance on Lord Melbourne, looking upon him as a man of an essentially frivolous and volatile nature; those who held this opinion appear to have misjudged him, but the mistake was one for which Lord Melbourne himself was chiefly responsible. He deliberately put on an affectation of foolish frivolity on many of his appearances in public. He would blow a feather about or toy with a sofa-cushion when he was receiving a solemn deputation, with apparently the express object of producing the impression that he was incapable of giving serious attention to serious things. He had to be found out, detected in earnestness as rogues are detected in dishonesty, by close and careful watching when he believed himself unobserved. Sydney Smith was one of those who unmasked him, and showed that with all his air of being hopelessly idle and trivial, he really was an honest and diligent Minister. In his important position as Prime Minister to the girl-Queen, he showed tact, discretion, and devotion, and won her complete confidence and friendship. Until the Queen’s marriage, he virtually combined the functions of Private Secretary to the Queen with those of Prime Minister. He was much more her intimate friend than a Prime Minister had ever been to a Sovereign before. He saw her every day, dined with her constantly, and sat next her at table, and had the art of explaining all the business of State without boring her with sermons and long speeches.