ar, as the
Duchess explained to the Bishops, the Princess had been kept in
ignorance of the station that she was likely to fill. "She is aware of
its duties, and that a Sovereign should live for others; so that when
Her innocent mind receives the impression of Her future fate, she
receives it with a mind formed to be sensible of what is to be expected
from Her, and it is to be hoped, she will be too well grounded in Her
principles to be dazzled with the station she is to look to." In the
following year it was decided that she should be enlightened on
this point. The well--known scene followed: the history lesson, the
genealogical table of the Kings of England slipped beforehand by the
governess into the book, the Princess's surprise, her inquiries, her
final realisation of the facts. When the child at last understood, she
was silent for a moment, and then she spoke: "I will be good," she
said. The words were something more than a conventional protestation,
something more than the expression of a superimposed desire; they
were, in their limitation and their intensity, their egotism and their
humility, an instinctive summary of the dominating qualities of a life.
"I cried much on learning it," her Majesty noted long afterwards. No
doubt, while the others were present, even her dear Lehzen, the little
girl kept up her self-command; and then crept away somewhere to ease her
heart of an inward, unfamiliar agitation, with a handkerchief, out of
her mother's sight.

But her mother's sight was by no means an easy thing to escape. Morning
and evening, day and night, there was no relaxation of the maternal
vigilance. The child grew into the girl, the girl into the young woman;
but still she slept in her mother's bedroom; still she had no place
allowed her where she might sit or work by herself. An extraordinary
watchfulness surrounded her every step: up to the day of her accession,
she never went downstairs without someone beside her holding her hand.
Plainness and regularity ruled the household. The hours, the days, the
years passed slowly and methodically by. The dolls--the innumerable
dolls, each one so neatly dressed, each one with its name so
punctiliously entered in the catalogue--were laid aside, and a little
music and a little dancing took their place. Taglioni came, to give
grace and dignity to the figure, and Lablache, to train the piping
treble upon his own rich bass. The Dean of Chester, the official
preceptor, conti