n of Religion, Knowledge, and the love of freedom in a
country, the more orderly, industrious, and wealthy is its population,
and that with the desire to preserve the constitutional Prerogatives
of the Crown ought to be co-ordinate the protection of the liberties
of the people."

[Pageheading: CLAREMONT]

The strictness of the _regime_ under which the Princess was brought
up is remarkable; and it is possible that her later zest for simple
social pleasures is partly to be accounted for by the austere routine
of her early days. In an interesting letter of 1843 to the Queen,
recalling the days of their childhood, Princess Feodore, the Queen's
half-sister, wrote--

"Many, many thanks, dearest Victoria, for your kind letter of the
7th from dear Claremont. Oh I understand how you like being there.
Claremont is a dear quiet place; to me also the recollection of the
few pleasant days I spent during my youth. I always left Claremont
with tears for Kensington Palace. When I look back upon those years,
which ought to have been the happiest in my life, from fourteen
to twenty, I cannot help pitying myself. Not to have enjoyed the
pleasures of youth is nothing, but to have been deprived of all
intercourse, and not one cheerful thought in that dismal existence of
ours, was very hard. My only happy time was going or driving out with
you and Lehzen; then I could speak and look as I liked. I escaped
some years of imprisonment, which you, my poor darling sister, had
to endure after I was married. But God Almighty has changed both
our destinies most mercifully, and has made us _so_ happy in our
homes--which is the only real happiness in this life; and those years
of trial were, I am sure, very useful to us both, though certainly not
pleasant. Thank God they are over!... I was much amused in your last
letter at your tracing the _quickness_ of our tempers in the female
line up to Grandmamma,[6] but I must own that you are _quite right_!"

[Footnote 6: Augusta Caroline Sophia, Dowager-Duchess
of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a Princess of Reuss Ebersdorf
(1757-1831).]

But if there was little amusement, there was, on the other hand, great
devotion; the Princess, as a child, had that peculiar combination
of self-will and warm-heartedness which is apt to win for a child a
special love from its elders. The Princess Feodore wrote to the Queen,
in 1843--

"... Spaeth[7] wished _me_ to thank you for the coronation print, as