r the inauguration of several great
industrial enterprises. She sometimes opened Parliament in person, and
was sometimes present at military and naval reviews. But she scarcely
ever appeared in London, except for a few days. She never appeared in
a London theatre. She shrank from great crowds and large social
gatherings, and buried herself too much in her Highland home. This is
one of the few real reproaches that history is likely to bring against
her. Her influence on English society was never wholly lost, and it
was always an influence for good, but for many years it was exerted
less frequently and less powerfully than it should have been, and the
tone of large sections of society lost something by her retirement.

It may be doubted, however, whether this long retirement really
injured her in the minds of her people. Her rare occasional
appearances had a greater weight, and the depth of feeling exhibited
by her long widowhood became a new title to respect. The transparent
simplicity and unselfishness of her character were now generally
appreciated, and her own books contributed greatly to make her people
understand her. It is in general far from a wise thing for royal
personages to descend into the arena of literature unless they possess
some special aptitude for it. They expose themselves to a kind of
criticism wholly different from that which follows them in their
public lives--a criticism more minute and often more deliberately
malevolent than that to which an ordinary writer is subject. The Queen
wrote pure and excellent English and she had a good literary taste,
but she certainly could never have become a great writer; and the
complete frankness and unreserve of her Journals, as well as their
curious homeliness of thought and feeling, were not viewed with favour
in some sections of the fashionable and of the literary world. There
were circles in which the word 'bourgeois,' and there were others in
which the word 'commonplace,' was often pronounced. Yet in this, as on
nearly all occasions when the Queen acted on her own impulse, she
acted wisely. Her books had at once an enormous circulation, and there
can be no doubt that they contributed very widely to her popularity.
Multitudes to whom she had before been little more than a name, now
realised that she was one with whom they had very much in common. Her
evident longing for sympathy produced an immediate response. Her deep
domestic affection, her constant interes