People often wonder what it was that gave the Queen
the hold she had upon her people, and made her the object of such reverence to a race not given to veneration, but by nature inclined to be critical and undemonstrative. We believe that it was because the nation really understood her. After watch- ing her for nearly seventy years, it had come to know her char- acter in a way in which the character of a great personage is seldom known. Her character stood revealed in all its perfect simplicity and sincerity. The Queen was, above all things, truthful,—the most truthful human being he had ever encoun- tered was the verdict of the Quaker statesman, John Bright. Next came her courage, moral and physical. She never flinched, or failed, or despaired. Of vanity and amour propre she had probably as little as any human being ever had, and she did not
know what it was to cherish a sense of injury or revenge. Her loyalty was absolute, and though Sovereigns are peculiarly liable to the charge of sacrificing their friends to political exigencies, there was no man or woman in the Kingdom who could say truthfully and with reason that they had been taken up and dropped or sacrificed by the Queen. She was the soul of honour and of honest dealing. Lastly, in her the sense of duty was, as we have said elsewhere, "a guiding light that made the path before her always bright." Add to this that she possessed a serenity and equanimity of temperament which enabled her to keep not only a brave face but a brave heart, however great her public anxieties.
