the imperial Crown of Great Britain and Ireland had solely and rightfully come—the first to proclaim her, with one voice and consent of tongue and heart, on the part of himself and his peers, his only lawful and rightful liege Lady Victoria, to whom he acknowledged all faith and rightful obedience, with all hearty and humble affection. It may be, the fact that he had succeeded to the throne of Hanover rendered the step less difficult. His name was also the first in the signatures of princes, Privy Councillors, peers, and gentlemen affixed in the next room to the proclamation. His brother, the Duke of Sussex, followed. They were both elderly men, with the younger older in infirmities than in years. The King of Hanover was sixty-six, the Duke of Sussex sixty-four years of age.
"And as these two old men, her uncles, knelt before her, swearing allegiance and kissing her hand," Greville went on, with a sense of pathos, curious for him, in the scene, "I saw her blush up to the eyes, as if she felt the contrast between their civil and their natural relations, and this was the only sign of emotion which she evinced. Her manner to them was very graceful and engaging; she kissed them both, and rose from her chair and moved towards the Duke of Sussex, who was farthest from her, and too infirm to reach her. She seemed rather bewildered at the multitude of men who were sworn, and who came one after another to kiss her hand, but she did not speak to anybody, nor did she make the slightest difference in her manner, or show any in her countenance, to any individual of any rank, station, or party. I particularly watched her when Melbourne and the Ministers, and the Duke of Wellington and Peel approached her. She went through the whole ceremony, occasionally looking at Melbourne for instruction when she had any doubt what to do, which hardly ever occurred, and with perfect coolness and self-possession, but at the same time with a graceful modesty and propriety particularly interesting and ingratiating. When the business was done she retired as she had entered, and I could see that nobody was in the adjoining room."
Mr. Greville's comment on the scene was singularly enthusiastic from such a man. "Never was anything like the first impression she produced, or the chorus of praise and admiration which is raised about her manner and behaviour, and certainly not without justice. It was something very extraordinary, and something far beyond what was looked for." He quoted Sir Robert Peel's and the Duke of Wellington's opinions in accordance with his own. "He (Sir Robert) likewise said how amazed he was at the manner and behaviour, at her apparent deep sense of her situation, her modesty, and at the same time her firmness. She appeared, in fact, to be awed, but not daunted; and afterwards, the Duke of Wellington told me the same thing, and added, that if she had been his own daughter he could not have desired to see her perform her part better."
We can understand the fatherly reference of the Duke, and the sort of personal pride he took in his young Queen. He had been present at her birth in this very Palace of Kensington; he had known her at every stage of her life hitherto. She was doing credit not only to herself and her mother, but to every friend she had, by her perfect fulfilment of what was required of her. Lord Campbell was equally eulogistic. "As soon as I heard that King William had expired I hurried to Kensington, to be present at the first Council of the new Sovereign. This, I think, was the most interesting scene I have ever witnessed. … I am quite in raptures with the deportment of the young Queen. Nothing could be more exquisitely proper. She looked modest, sorrowful, dejected, diffident, but at the same time she was quite cool and collected, and composed and firm. Her childish appearance was gone. She was an intelligent and graceful young woman, capable of acting and thinking for herself. Considering that she was the only female in the room, and that she had no one about her with whom she was familiar, no human being was ever placed in a more trying situation."
What was most conspicuous in the Queen had been already remarked upon and admired in the young girl at Queen Adelaide's Drawing-room. Here were the same entire simplicity, with its innate dignity only further developed; the power of being herself and no other, which left her thoughtful of what she ought to do—not of how she should look and strike others—and rendered her free to consider her neighbours; the docility to fit guidance, and yet the ability to judge for herself; the quick sense all the time of her high calling.
That first Council at Kensington has become an episode in history—a very significant one. It has been painted, engraved, written about many a time, without losing its fascination. Sir David Wilkie made a famous picture of it, which hangs in a corridor at Windsor In this picture the artist used certain artistic liberties, such as representing the Queen in a white muslin robe instead of a black gown, and the Privy Councillors in the various costumes of their different callings—uniforms with stars and ribands, lawyers' gowns and full-bottomed wigs, bishops' lawn, instead of the ordinary morning dress of the gentlemen of their generation. It must have tickled Wilkie as he worked to come to an old acquaintance of his boyhood and youth in John, Lord Campbell, and to recognise how bewilderingly far removed from the bleak little parish of Cults and the quiet little town of Cupar was the coincidence which summoned him, the distinguished painter, in the execution of a royal commission, to draw the familiar features of his early playmate in those of the Attorney-General, who appeared as a privileged member of the illustrious throng.
We still turn back wistfully to that bright dawn of a beneficent reign. We see the slight girlish figure in her simple mourning filling her place sedately at the head of the Council table. At the foot, facing her Majesty, sits the Duke of Sussex, almost venerable in his stiffness and lameness, wearing the black velvet skull-cap by which he was distinguished in those days. We look at the well-known faces, and think of the famous names among the crowd of mature men, each of whom was hanging on the words and looks of his mistress. There is Copley the painter's son, sagacious Lyndhurst, who lived to be the Nestor of the bench and the peerage; there is his great opponent, Robertson the historian's grand-nephew, Brougham, a tyrant of freedom, an illustrious Jack-of-all-trades, the most impassioned, most public-spirited, most egotistical of men. He was a contradiction to himself as well as to his neighbours. His strongly-marked face, with its shaggy brows, high cheek-bones, aggressive nose, mouth drooping at the corners, had not lost its mobility. He was restless and fault-finding in this presence as in any other. The Duke of Wellington's Roman nose lent something of the eagle to his aspect. It was a more patrician attribute than Sir Robert Peel's long upper lip, with its shy, nervous compression, which men mistook for impassive coldness, just as the wits blundered in calling his strong, serviceable capacity, noble uprightness, and patient labour "sublime mediocrity." William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne, was the type of an aristocrat, with brains and heart. He was still a very handsome man at fifty-eight, as he was also "perhaps the most graceful and agreeable gentleman of the generation." His colleague—destined to marry Lord Melbourne's sister, the most charming woman who ever presided in turn over two Ministerial salons, Lord Palmerston, in spite of his early achievements in waltzing at Almack's, was less personally and mentally gifted. He had rather an indiarubber-like elasticity and jauntiness than stateliness, or dignity, or grace. His irregular-featured face was comical, but he bore the bell in exhaustless spirits, which won him, late in life, the reputation of perennial juvenility, and the enviable if not altogether respectful sobriquet of "the evergreen Palm." Lord John Russell, with his large head and little body, of which Punch made stock, with his friendship for Moore and his literary turn, as well as his ambition to serve his country like a true Russell, was at this date wooing and wedding the fair young widow, Lady Ribblesdale, his devotion to whom had drawn from the wags a profane pun. They called the gifted little lord "the widow's mite." When the marriage ceremony was being performed between him and Lady Ribblesdale the wedding-ring fell from the bride's finger—an evil omen soon fulfilled for the marriage tie was speedily broken by her early death. "Plain John Campbell" was a very different man. The son of a minister of the Church of Scotland, in a presbytery which included among its members the father of Sir David Wilkie, his Scotch tongue, Scotch shrewdness, healthy appetite for work, and invulnerable satisfaction with himself and his surroundings, caused themselves to be felt in another sphere than that to which he was born.
"The Cabinet Ministers tendered to the Queen the seals of their respective offices, which her Majesty was most graciously pleased to return, and they severally kissed hands on their reappointment." The last business done was to arrange for the public proclamation of the Queen, and to take her pleasure with regard to the time, which she fixed for the day following, Wednesday, the 21st of June, at ten o'clock. When Lord Albemarle, for whom she had sent, went to her and told her he was come to take her orders, she said, "I have no