IT has been often said that the most interesting narrative that can be offered to public attention is the true story of a man's life, however homely and however plainly set forth-so often that the saying has fallen into that reservoir of truisms which forms the conversational treasury of matter-of-fact people. The saying is as false as it is true, for there are masses of mortal creatures who could not in any shape, living or dead, produce anything but weariness to their fellow-creatures; but there are occasions when it leaps into veracity, and proves itself in the sight of all men. Such an occasion has just occurred. The first fair chapters of a blameless life, set forth with a simplicity and openness, practicable perhaps only on the very highest level of society, have just been offered to England; and the interest with which everybody has seized upon them has not been equalled by the highest work of art produced in recent days. The charm of reality and human sympathetic feeling has no doubt been enhanced by the lofty rank and special circumstances of the hero of the tale; but as that rank and those circumstances could alone have made such a revelation possible, this point of attraction drops naturally into the wider general interest. It is because of the one life in it, now ended and rounded into perfection, and because of the shadow of another life, yet spared, but brought to one of those conclusions which make past existence almost as perfect as if rounded by death, that "The Queen's Book" has a claim upon us all. And there is, in the first volume, an interest more special still. No doubt mature life, with all its responsibilities and trials, is more important and of greater

weight in history; but it is youth which is catholic. We have not all been elevated into the high places of this world, nor done great deeds, nor conceived plans such as may act upon our fellow-creatures for generations: but we have all been young; we have all had our little romance of happiness or of disappointment; we have been in Arcadia, like the rest; and therefore the story of a young life, in its freshness, in its early stir of thought, in its love and hopeful setting forth, is germane to us all.

Such is the volume which her Majesty has just given to the world, and which is full of traces of her own hand and supervision. It is not the life of the Prince Consort;

that graver story still remains to tell. It is the story of a blueeyed boy born over the seas and plains in a little German principality, near half a century ago, with the best blood in Christendom in his veins, and one of the solidest, best conditioned, most wholesome of souls within his handsome form; of how he made youth's unconscious progress through all the pleasant ways of congenial learning, taking in knowledge and culture along with the sweet air and daily sunshine, and strayed at last into fair manhood and into England, and to his love; and so came to the wedding, which is the conventional conclusion of romance, and left the primrose paths and early pleasures behind him, and put his hand seriously to the work of life. Her Majesty was well-advised to give this little instalment first to the world. No doubt the after volumes will be much the more important, but this has a charm which it would be impossible to

put into the graver records of middle age. The father of our kings to be has a right to our respectful regard-but the young Prince coming out to seek his fortune, to win his lady, to carve out his career for himself, is something nearer to us. We can go heartily into all the vicissitudes of his adventures; we hold our breath in his suspense, and understand the fulness of his triumph. It is the perennial hero, the youth of every age and nation. He would be interesting to us as a peasant, and he is interesting as a prince. But the prince has so far the advantage of the peasant that the frank belief in the sympathy and interest of all men which comes natural to those who have been born to receive perpetual homage, is wanting in other classes of society. On our lower levels a hundred little restrictions are sensible to us. We are jealous over our secrets, defending them from the strictures of our neighbours, from the very prying of the daylight. We are conscious that there are few people who would care to know about us, fewer still who would sympathise, many who would sneer. And it is the nature of the common mass, at least when that mass is English, to be a little ashamed of its own best affections. But at the height of royalty these petty hesitations vanish. The Queen has, and has with reason, a royal confidence in the interest of her subjects. A life that has to be lived in sight of the world has a noble prerogative of explaining itself to the world. Thus out of the very publicity of royal existence arises a fresh simplicity of self-exposition, a frank candour and openness which belong to the best and purest side of human nature as if the exceptional and isolated place conferred also, when in conjunction with a sweet and unworldly nature, a certain exceptional freshness and unsophistication. The royal maiden in all sweet modesty and womanliness

has yet the burden laid upon her of saying the first words of love which no man without that warrant might venture to address to her; and it is natural that when all the tale is told, and the seal of earthly conclusion has been put upon that early romance, her own lips should not hesitate to tell the tender idyll. A thousand hesitations would overwhelm a woman of humbler rank in a similar narrative-so that it is only from a Queen that her people can receive the touching and sympathetic story of her own heart and love.

The prince presented to us in this volume is not, accordingly, the mature and mellowed man, full of experience, wisdom, and discretion, who is suggested to us by the name of Albert. He is a boy who has not yet had time to grow into perfection; a creature who plays tricks and does naughtinesses, and gets into trouble; though at the same time he shows in his unformed character the germs of that wonderful selfcontrol and dutifulness from which all his after greatness grew. We know how good he was; it is, therefore, a kind of pleasure to find that he was not always nor unchangeably good, but had fits of petulance and temper, and especially of open boyish mischief, like other people. They lived a pleasant homely life those German princes, loving the Heimath with Saxon devotion, yet mingling with that love a sociability and a sentimentalism which are far from having any reflection in our insular nature. The Coburg family seems to have been rich above all in grandmothers, in that vivacious, warm-hearted, long-lived, potential development of woman whom we have all known, but whom, it appears probable, our grandchildren will never know. One of these old ladies, and the one whose influence and love lasted longest, was but the step-mother of the unhappy princess who brought Prince Albert and his brother into the world; but notwithstanding

the divorce and early death of their mother and their father's second marriage, the maternal step-grandmother kept up, as is evident, the closest relations with the family, and was looked upon with respect and affection as complete as if the link of blood had been perfect. This patriarchal permanence of all family ties and apparent possibility of keeping the family peace, which is so fine a feature in the life of the Continental nations, is one of the most deplorable wants in our English code of domestic traditions. The education of the boys at Coburg was conducted with true German method and application; though the caprices of the GrandDucal papa, who would breakfast out of doors, and carried his children about, now to the gardens of the Rosenau, now to the heights of the Festung, here and there and everywhere as fancy dictated, wasting the morning hours, troubled the soul of their tutor. They grew up working hard, yet playing too-going the little round of pleasant little palaces, having a collection of noble young Teutonic lads like themselves to share their sports as methodically as the lessons, and living, it is evident, a very pleasant natural sort of life. There were but two boys, and they were inseparable. Their father was kind and fond, though perhaps not so wise as other members of the family. The distinction between their comrades and themselves was not so great as to prevent a degree of affectionate equality and friendship; and the world was all before them where to choose their future career. Such claims of state as are made by a German principality fell upon the elder; the younger had the example of his uncle, already one of the most eminent names in Europe, to encourage and guide him. Thus the position itself was a kind of ideal position for a high-spirited and ambitious youth, even had there not been hovering over all his

life that shadow of English royalty which in the strangest mournful way had for a moment crossed the path of his uncle Leopold, as if to enable him to be the future guide and counsellor of the husband of a British Queen. For this position the young Albert of Saxe-Coburg was trained, if not consciously, yet in the most effectual way; his education, though conducted naturally, and without any apparent specialty, being of a certain broad and princely character. "He liked above all things to discuss questions of public law and metaphysics, and constantly during our many walks juridical principles or philosophical doctrines were thoroughly discussed," says one of his fellowstudents. In his letters, though they are few, are gleams of the same inclination of mind. The pleasures of art and general literature, though he was fond of both, never seem to have drawn him into carelessness of this great and lofty profession of politics to which he was in a manner born. His own boyish remarks on the events going on round him, convey already the expression of a clear intelligence, in which germs of statesmanlike insight are apparent. In other matters it is evident that a certain gravity and sobriety of mind were always characteristic of him. His was one of those rare natures which are intolerant only of the useless and unnecessary. Eating he thought a "waste of time," and to be got through with all expedition; the lighter intercourse of society bored him. When Duke Leopold of Tuscany remarked admiringly, "La belle danseuse l'attend, le savant l'occupe," he meant the highest praise; but in reality he noted a peculiarity of character, by no means absolutely admirable, but quite individual. State-balls, after all, are a useless sort of ceremonies, and the young man born to so much work in the world had little leisure for the "belle danseuse." He could be merry with his fellow-students and

mimic his masters and keep the princely Burschenschaft in laughter in the intervals of their grave discussions; but it went against him to make a business of pleasure. When nothing else was to be done he endured it, or went behind a curtain and dropped asleep. Other symptoms of that impatience of the conventional which so often, in youth, accompanies the development of a superior intelligence, are manifest as we go on. He will not be tempted into any stereotyped raptures and his nature is not of the kind which goes of itself into the deeper enthusiasm which such raptures simulate. There is no thing in him vague, nothing wordy and effusive. He has to see everything, to note everything, as if with a prescience of the time when it will be necessary for him to know everything, and when he will have little time to learn in. Even fine scenery does not move him to any outburst of feeling. Rome itself makes at the first glance an impression "rather unfavourable;" but on the other hand he lingers with loving diligence among the pictures everywhere, and inhales great draughts of the pure country air whenever he can come by it, with unfailing delight. Thus the young man reveals himself unawares. A man of the present, full of hearty admiration for all great things achieved in the past, but in no wise drawn to it by sentimental or poetic ties; a little impatient of everything that does not commend itself to his sense of what is needful, enduring it, not versatile enough to take any pleasure in it; full of good sense, and a dutiful consciousness of his own position and powers and their responsibilities; if with any fault, perhaps a little too free of any temptation to nonsense and its accompaniments-but fond of every simple, natural, healthful pleasure, of the fresh air, the stillness, the fair gardens, and singing birds, the freedom of the country. We should have said, indeed, judging

him by what is apparent of his character rather than by his history, that freedom was the great personal necessity of this noble young man -freedom to be himself, to work and think and study and execute, to take such simple delights as pleased him by the way, and to have no chains of ceremony or useless necessities enforced upon his life. This is the impression conveyed by the story of his early years; and if we judge truly it throws a yet finer light upon all the repression and self-control of his actual career.

The great event in which his youthful life culminated becomes of greater and greater weight in the story as the years go on. There were obstacles, it appears. The Queen-it is herself who tells the tale-was disinclined to a very early marriage, and upbraids herself for her delay with a singular and tender simplicity which proves what we have already said, that a heart may keep its freshness on the highest elevation better than among the more homely complications of ordinary life. With that remorseful love which dwells upon and blames itself for any trifle which could have caused a moment's pang to the dead, her Majesty herself interposes to acknowledge this venial shortcoming of her youth. Nor can the Queen," she says, think without indignation against herself of her wish to keep the Prince waiting for probably three or four years, at the risk of ruining all his prospects for life, until she might feel inclined to marry!... The only excuse the Queen can make for herself is in the fact that the sudden change from the secluded life at Kensington to the independence of her position as Queen regnant at the age of eighteen, put all idea of marriage out of her mind, which she now most bitterly regrets. A worse school for a young girl, or one more detrimental to all natural feelings and affections, cannot well be imagined than the

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position of a Queen at eighteen, without experience and without a husband to guide and support her. This the Queen can state from painful experience, and she thanks God that none of her dear daughters are exposed to such danger."

Happy is the wife, happy the husband, who has no heavier sin to regret and repent! The manifestation of a spotless conscience in this touching self-apology is one of the most delicate suggestions in the book of a perfect union. How little there can have been in it to vex the tenderest scrupulousness when this girlish hesitation shows half like a crime! The position of "a queen at eighteen" thus modestly brought before us might well have excused a more serious fault. Her Majesty gives us further indications of a young, joyous, natural heart, in the midst of that early royalty, which will make many a reader smile and sigh. In those days a great many of us liked London and amusement better than the country and quiet and home duties. Such youthful likings go by, even without the sweet inducement which turned the young monarch's heart to better pleasures. When State - balls and Drawing - rooms come to be duties, they are not likely to be very amusing; and the chances are that by this time most people of her generation care as little for them as she does. These and their corresponding ceremonies are but duties, and no more, to most persons of mature age; and personal happiness and misery come to have very little to do with them, as we all know. The Prince did his duty-as soon as it came to be his duty-heroically in this way as in all others. He sat out or stood out, at no small cost to himself, the lingering entertainments demanded by State necessities. Though he was a lover of early hours and simple habits, he put his neck under the yoke with his usual steady perception of what was needful, seeing the entertainments and

Royal gaieties to be as much a part of the day's work as any graver duty; but it was his influence, her Majesty tells us, which turned the happy young Queen from too great a devotion to the amusements so natural to her age; as no doubt it will be the influence of his selfdenying and temperate wisdom which will bring the mistress back to the head of her table, and the Queen to the splendour of her throne.

A love-story is about the most universal thing in existence. Few indeed are the individuals who come to years of discretion without that inevitable episode; but it is very seldom that the tale is told except to those ears to which it specially belongs. Death, which lifts those tender youthful recollections into a pensive heaven of happiness past, alone brings the sacred story within the range of narrative. But the circumstances of the romance which forms the chief attraction of this volume are as strange in their familiarity as is the simple frankness of the tale. Throughout both these young lives the shadow of this coming alliance had fluttered in the early sunshine, now coming close, now receding—a visionary link. A former Coburg, King Leopold, had made, as is well known, a curious and sad study, as it were, of the position. He, too, had married a girl-princess, who was to be, although she had not then attained, the rank of Queen; and had prepared himself for the difficult position of Prince Consort. But Providence had balked this scheme, and turned his hopes and happiness to destruction. He had gone away again with all his unfulfilled thoughts in his sagacious mind, and he had done his best to train another Coburg for the same position. It will perhaps never be known how much Prince Albert was indebted to his wise uncle, who had, at such sorrowful cost to himself, made, as it were, a sketch of the situation