expressed her
regret to Lady Flora, but Sir James Clark was not dismissed. The tide
of opinion turned violently against the Queen and her advisers; high
society was disgusted by all this washing of dirty linen in Buckingham
Palace; the public at large was indignant at the ill-treatment of Lady
Flora. By the end of March, the popularity, so radiant and so abundant,
with which the young Sovereign had begun her reign, had entirely
disappeared.

There can be no doubt that a great lack of discretion had been shown by
the Court. Ill-natured tittle-tattle, which should have been instantly
nipped in the bud, had been allowed to assume disgraceful proportions;
and the Throne itself had become involved in the personal malignities
of the palace. A particularly awkward question had been raised by the
position of Sir James Clark. The Duke of Wellington, upon whom it was
customary to fall back, in cases of great difficulty in high places, had
been consulted upon this question, and he had given it as his opinion
that, as it would be impossible to remove Sir James without a public
enquiry, Sir James must certainly stay where he was. Probably the Duke
was right; but the fact that the peccant doctor continued in the
Queen's service made the Hastings family irreconcilable and produced an
unpleasant impression of unrepentant error upon the public mind. As for
Victoria, she was very young and quite inexperienced; and she can hardly
be blamed for having failed to control an extremely difficult situation.
That was clearly Lord Melbourne's task; he was a man of the world, and,
with vigilance and circumspection, he might have quietly put out the
ugly flames while they were still smouldering. He did not do so; he
was lazy and easy-going; the Baroness was persistent, and he let things
slide. But doubtless his position was not an easy one; passions ran
high in the palace; and Victoria was not only very young, she was very
headstrong, too. Did he possess the magic bridle which would curb
that fiery steed? He could not be certain. And then, suddenly, another
violent crisis revealed more unmistakably than ever the nature of the
mind with which he had to deal.

VII

The Queen had for long been haunted by a terror that the day might come
when she would be obliged to part with her Minister. Ever since the
passage of the Reform Bill, the power of the Whig Government had
steadily declined. The General Election of 1837 had left them with a
very small m