t in her servants, her high
spirits, her love of scenery, her love of animals, her power of taking
delight in little things, appeared vividly in her pages and came home
to the largest classes of her people.

In some respects the Queen was an eminently democratic Sovereign.
While maintaining the dignity of her position, rank and wealth were in
her eyes always subordinate to the great realities of life and to
true human affections. In no one was the touch of Nature that makes
the whole world kin more constantly visible. She was never more in her
place than in visiting some poor tenant on the morrow of a great
bereavement, or uttering words of comfort by the sick bed of some
humble dependant. Men of all ranks who came in contact with her were
struck with her thoughtful kindness, and her royal gift of an
excellent memory never showed itself more frequently than in the
manner in which she remembered and inquired after the fortunes and
happiness of obscure persons related to those with whom she spoke.

Her religious opinions were brought very little before the public.
Beyond a deep sense of Providential guidance and of the comforting
power of religion, little is to be gathered from her published
utterances; but she seemed equally at home in the Scotch Presbyterian
and the Anglican Episcopal Church, and her marked admiration for such
men as Dean Stanley and Norman Macleod, and for the preaching of
Principal Caird, gives some clue to the bias of her opinions. Her mind
was not speculative but eminently practical, and while she patronised
good works of the most various kinds, there is reason to believe that
those which most appealed to her personal feelings were those which
directly contributed to alleviate the sufferings, or promote the
material welfare, of the poor. She devoted the greater part of her
Jubilee present to institutions for providing nurses for the sick
poor, and this is said to have been one of the charities in which she
took the warmest and most constant interest.

She is said not to have had any sympathy with the movement for the
extension of political power to women, which became so conspicuous in
her reign; but her own success in filling for sixty-three years the
highest political position in the nation will always be quoted in its
support. Considering, indeed, how comparatively small has been the
number of reigning female Sovereigns, it is remarkable how many in
modern times have shown themselves pre-emine