quickly
noticed that the part of Queen and mistress seemed native to her, and
that she filled it with not more grace than propriety. "She always
strikes me as possessed of singular penetration, firmness, and
independence," wrote Dr. Norman Macleod in 1860; acute observers in
1837 took note of the same traits, rarer far in youth than in full
maturity, and closely connected with the "reasoning, searching"
quality of her mind, "anxious to get at the root and reality of
things, and abhorring all shams, whether in word or deed." [Footnote]

[Footnote: "Life of Norman Macleod, D.D." vol. ii.]

It was well for England that its young Sovereign could exemplify
virile strength as well as womanly sweetness; for it was indeed a
cloudy and dark day when she was called to her post of lonely
grandeur and hard responsibility; and to fill that post rightly would
have overtasked and overwhelmed a feebler nature. It is true that the
peace of Europe, won at Waterloo, was still unbroken. But already,
within our borders and without them, there were the signs of coming
storm. The condition of Ireland was chronically bad; the condition of
England was full of danger; on the Continent a new period of
earth-shaking revolution announced itself not doubtfully.

It would be hardly possible to exaggerate the wretched state of the
sister isle, where fires of recent hate were still smouldering, and
where the poor inhabitants, guilty and guiltless, were daily living
on the verge of famine, over which they were soon to be driven. Their
ill condition much aggravated by the intemperate habits to which
despairing men so easily fall a prey. The expenditure of Ireland on
proof spirits alone had in the year 1829 attained the sum of
L6,000,000.

In England many agricultural labourers were earning starvation wages,
were living on bad and scanty food, and were housed so wretchedly
that they might envy the hounds their dry and clean kennels. A dark
symptom of their hungry discontent had shown itself in the strange
crime of rick-burning, which went on under cloud of night season
after season, despite the utmost precautions which the luckless
farmers could adopt. The perpetrators were not dimly guessed to be
half-famished creatures, taking a mad revenge for their wretchedness
by destroying the tantalising stores of grain, too costly for their
consumption; the price of wheat in the early years of Her Majesty's
reign and for some time previously being very high,