PREFACE

A PREFACE is an old-fashioned thing, we are told, and yet modern publishers repeat the demand made by their brethren of Queen Victoria's early days, and declare that one is wanted. If this be so, I am glad to take the opportunity thus given to me to thank the publishers for the quickness and completeness with which the matter printed in the following pages was issued. Nowadays there are so many able writers in the field of literary activity writing volumes, or articles in the newspapers or magazines, that very rapid work is necessary if a man desires to impress readers with his views of a character or of an event, before the public have listened to others. The long waiting, pondering, collating, and weighing, fit for the final labor of the historian, is impossible to him who rapidly sketches in his subject for the eyes of the generation which desires an immediate survey of the immediate past. We may deplore the fact that great themes cannot thus be worthily treated. The facts that are already public are alone those that may be dwelt upon. But these may be so grouped and illustrated that a first view of the history, in which the reader may himself have borne a part, can be presented to the eye. A just proportion also may be given to the various matters. which have made history during the sixty or seventy years beyond which no man's memory may pass.

It is to be regretted that this necessity for speed and comparative haste makes it also necessary to be very brief. For in a long reign there is so much of importance that may and should be told that the narrow limits of one volume, presenting pictorial as well as written description of our times, cannot suffice. I had collected many interesting letters from men of mark telling of the great events of the hour, and had intended in this volume to give those speaking of days which have passed fifty years ago. But space defies the attempt; they are left aside, illustrative and interesting as many are. Only the strongest and highest surging of the currents of those days may be picked out as the stream of time hurries past.

Is it wrong to write at all when there is so much of what many must feel to be untoward haste? I do not think so, for men must be fed even though you cannot provide for them the best food best prepared. You must do all you can within the time allotted to secure for them the best available, or they may go farther and fare worse. This is the plea I would put in both for publishers and writer. If there is much that the subject of a biography has himself said or written, which may be presented because already public, the biographer is doubly fortunate in that, saying little himself, he can bring his readers within sound of the very voice to which he himself has been listening. We do not care to know the effect of life and events on the mind of a writer. We desire to hear the person whose life formed those events or whose existence illumined them. Comment on a character and the attempted dissection of motives and actions on the part of an

essayist or historian we must often feel to be an impertinence. Let the dead speak. Do not lecture around their shrines. To do so would be to confess that life is, indeed, a vain show. If the memory of those just taken from us does not suffice for comment, we confess they are already half forgotten. But it will be long before the hurrying waves of daily or hourly business in the struggle of life can efface any memory cherished by her people, or any judgment of character formed by the loving countyrmen of our dear Queen.

Fortunately, however slight must be the sketch of her reign, and however limited the space given for it, the great features of her life are described by herself, and the impressions made on a mind wonderfully open, honest, and truthful have been written down at the time by her own hand. It is this which reconciles me somewhat to the want in this volume of the letters giving the thoughts of the Queen's contemporaries on the wars, the changes in Church and State, and the social and literary landmarks of her days.

To Mr. Mildred I am indebted for excellent secretarial work, and for the use of shorthand, which is in itself one of the achievements of the late reign. The embodiment of the words of the author in pictures, the art of illustration, exercised for quick presentation of the scenes that the public desire to witness, has seen its popular development only in our time. I am indebted to Mr. G. Floyd for the judgment he has brought to bear on the choice of photographs, drawings, and pictures he has been enabled to collect for this work. To him is due the gathering in of most of the objects which have become mementoes of the days of the great

Queen. Mr. A. Rischgitz has kindly assisted by his wide knowledge of art. I fear it has not always been possible to trace the exact dates of some of the portraits, but the courtesy of those who have rights in these matters has been unfailing. To the proprietors of various periodicals I am indebted for allowing the reproduction of some things that have appeared in their pages. Above all, in this category of obligation, I must renew my thanks to Sir Theodore Martin, whose invaluable work has been largely drawn upon for the original documents which show the character of our late sovereign, as drawn by her own letters and the correspondence of Prince Albert. This work of Sir Theodore's was published at the instance of the Queen, who fully agreed that it was necessary that some authoritative and standard history of the transactions in which her Majesty and the Prince shared should be published to counteract the false impression that had been sown by gossip relative to the Prince's part in public affairs.

Determined as this nation is to govern itself, it was always easy for the envious or malicious to sow seeds of suspicion in regard to the conduct of a foreigner in our midst who held the high place of Prince Consort. The silence which must veil the councils of the Ministers of the Crown, especially on foreign affairs, is peculiarly liable to breed distrust, unless there be a clear understanding as to the limits of influence. Where there is family connection or relationship with foreign Courts there must be private correspondence. This may have an immense influence for good, and work for the peace of the world. But necessarily secret as