BOOKS.
QUEEN VICTORIA IN "THE DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY."*
To one who has watched the home and foreign politics of the country for more than fifty years, and has had some little share in its literary activity, this volume has a — —
• Tits Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by Sidney Lee. Supplement Vol. la. London; Smith, Eidgr, na4 Co. [1.50. Eat-3 melancholy interest. Putting aside some fifty or sixty articles which repair accidental omissions, we find that not less than two-thirds of the remainder belong to the last -five years. There is scarcely h name that is not familiar: there are not a few that have a closer association, and renew the sense of personal loss. About these notibes it would be difficult to say enough, and easy to say too much. We shall give such space as is at our command to one article, the one to which every reader will first turn, the memoir of Queen Victoria with which Mr. Sidney Lee completes in the worthiest way the labours of his editorship. Most of the biographies in the volume are, for reasons which every one will appreciate, somewhat colourless. Mr. Lee has not felt himself under an obligation to follow this rule. He has given us what may well be described as a serious attempt to appreciate the Queen's life and character. A hundred Odd pages do not give much room for such a story ; but the space has been admirably economised. May we hope that Mr. Lee, now released from his editorial labours, may develop this sketch into a complete biography?
Mr. Lee is disposed, we see, to regard as doubtful the familiar story of how the Princess Victoria, when in her twelfth year, first learnt how near she was to the throne from a genealogical table which had been purposely put among the pages of a history of England. The anecdote came from the Baroness Lehzen, but it was not written down till many years afterwards; the Queen herself was doubtful about it. It is not easy, indeed, to see how she could have escaped the knowledge of what had been almost assured before she completed her first year. She was quite shrewd enough to observe and account for the foolish jealousy of her uncle,. King William. There was something quite royal, too, in the incident which Mr. Lee relates from the Von Billow memoirs; how, two years before, the little Princess had given her portrait to each of a party of children who had been invited to play with her. There is also some difference from the commonly received story in the narrative of the early acquaintance with Prince Albert. He came over in 1836, and was on view, so to speak, along with the two sons of the Prince of Orange and Duke William of Brunswick. He was the nominee of Leopold; they were alternatives put forward by King William, *ho had no liking for the Saxe-Coburgs. Prince Albert went away admir- ing but heart-whole ; but the Princess had begun to calculate possibilities. Writing to Leopold,' she said : "I hope and trust all will go on prosperously and well on this subject, now of so much importance to me." 'Her views," as Mr. Lee puts it, "were uncoloured by sentiment." Happily, the real sentiment came in later. As for the alterna- tives, we may well be thankful that neither the Orange nor the Brunswick candidate was regarded with favour. The biography brings, however, into vivid relief the fact that the nation was slow to discover what an excellent choice had been made. One reads with disgust the story of how the proposed allowance of £50,000—possibly ample, but certainly not munificent—was cut down to f:30,000, and by the Tories, of all people in the world. Sir Robert Peel's share in this pro- ceeding was one of the least creditable parts of his career. It is difficult not to think that he remembered the "Bed- chamber Plot" of the previous year. That had been a series of blunders. Peel was hasty, the Queen owned afterwards that she had been foolish, and the Whigs stooped to intrigue; but there was no good reason for the "personal hostility" which it roused in the Tories. As to the constitu- tional position of the Prince Consort, however, it must be owned that it was a perplexing matter, and that the suspicion with which he was regarded, unfounded as it was in fact, was justified in theory. He was an irremovable and irresponsible Vizier. "His share in the rule of the country through most of the twenty-one years of their married life is indistinguish- able from hers." We cannot wonder that the people, knowing little of what he was, were angry and impatient. In reality he was uniformly a moderating and enlightening influence. For the Queen seems to have had what we may almost call absolutist tendencies. She had the supreme good sense to recognise facts; but she never accepted the maxim that the Sovereign "reigns but does not govern." Certainly the most interesting part of this memoir is the narrative of her part in the management of foreign affairs. How far she influenced the course of events it is impossible to say. In the war between Austria on the one side, and Prance and Sardinia on the other, her views went counter to the general sympathies of the nation, and she effected nothing. I n -the
Danish troubles, where these sympathies were probably less active, she seems to have thrown no little weight into the
German scale. The grievances of Poland, again, which have
always roused at least some interest in this country, seemed, Mr. Lee thinks, not to have touched her. In domestic politics she had, we can hardly say less interest, but fewer calls for in- terference. Her most memorable achievement in this directien was the pacification, if we may so call it, which she effected ia the matter of the Irish Church. Happily she had at her call a sagacious intermediary in the person of Archbishop Tait, and by his help she averted a really dangerous crisis. Less com- monly known is the part she took in the political action which followed the suppression of the Indian Mutiny. The draft of the proclamation,which was to assert her rule over India seemed to her—she was then abroad, at Ba,belsberg, near Potsdam-- to assert England's power "with unnecessary brusqueness," and not to be "calculated to conciliate native sentiment." It was her view that such a document should breathe feelings of generosity, benevolence, and religious toleration, and point out the privilege which the Indians will receive in being placed on an equality with the subjects of the British Crown, and the prosperity following in the train of civilisation." Mr. Lee well says " that the Queen never brought her influ- ence to bear on an executive act of government with nobler effect."
Throughout his memoir Mr. Lee pictures for us a vigorous personality, much swayed by motives that do not always make for good government, the chief among them being a strong affection for, and belief in, her family, but dominated, as a whole, by the sense of duty and right. Other rulers have had these qualities, perhaps in equal measure, and yet met with disaster to themselves and their realms. But the Queen had also in an eminent degree the gift of teachableness, accommodating herself with rare aptitude to the ever. changing circumstances of a constitutional Monarch. There has probably never been any ruler, born in the Royal caste, who knew how to look at the -problems of government as they are looked at from below. This same power came out in another direction in her gift of unfailing sympathy.
Mr. Lee in an interesting passage discusses the question whether the power of the Sovereign was increased or diminished in the Queen's reign. He adopts the conclusion that it was diminished. The formal diminutions were the con- trol assumed by Parliament of the command of the Army, the transfer to the Home Secretary of the prerogative of mercy, and the changed method in the distribution of honours. But he sees a more potent cause in the Queen's own action, her long absences from the seat of government even at critical times, and her frequent abstinence from the functions of opening and proroguing Parliament. She thus accustomed the nation to feel that the State can exist and flourish without the presence of the Sovereign. He may be right. •On the other hand, it may be urged that it is only in the simplest, we may say barbarous, state of government that the Sovereign must in person lead the Army, preside over the Council, and ad- minister justice, just as the general assembly of the governed exists only in the most primitive States. A higher civilisation substitutes for the visible presence a symbolic idea. One thing, however, she certainly did; she identified the power of the Monarch with the personal virtues of the occupant of the throne. As long as the memory lives of what she was it will be impossible for the Sovereign to assume the license which was tolerated even within the remem- brance of persons yet living. If some unhappy chance were to place upon the throne some headstrong and profligate youth, the memory of the wise and blameless Queen would seal his fate, and possibly the fate of the institution of kingship.
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