sband's prompt
action, never betrayed any agitation or alarm; and her dauntless
bearing, and the care for others which she manifested by dispensing
with the presence of her usual lady attendants when she anticipated
one of these assaults, immensely increased the already high esteem in
which her people held her. The first assailant, a half-crazy lad of
low station named Oxford, was shut up in a lunatic asylum. For the
second, a man named Francis, the same plea could not be urged; but
the death-sentence he had incurred was commuted to transportation for
life. Almost immediately a deformed lad called Bean followed the
example of Francis. Her Majesty, who had been very earnest to save
the life of the miserable beings attacking her, desired an alteration
in the law as to such assaults; and their penalty was fixed at seven
years' transportation, or imprisonment not exceeding three years, to
which the court was empowered to add a moderate number of
whippings--punishments having no heroic fascination about them, like
that which for heated and shallow brains invested the hideous doom of
"traitors." The expedient proved in a measure successful, none of the
later assaults, discreditable as they are, betraying a really
murderous intention. It has been remarked as a noteworthy
circumstance that popular English monarchs have been more exposed to
such dangers than others who were cordially disliked. It is not
hatred that has prompted these assassins so much as imbecile vanity
and the passion for notoriety, misleading an obscure coxcomb to think

"His glory would be great
According to _her_ greatness whom he quenched."

CHAPTER III.

FRANCE AND ENGLAND.

[Illustration: Buckingham Palace.]

It is necessary now to look at the relations of our Government with
other nations, and in particular with France, whose fortunes just at
this time had a clearly traceable effect on our own.

For several years the Court of England had been on terms of
unprecedented cordiality with the French Court. The Queen had
personally visited King Louis Philippe at the Chateau d'Eu--an event
which we must go back as far as the days of Henry VIII to
parallel--and had contracted a warm friendship for certain members of
his family, in particular for the Queen, Marie Amelie, for the
widowed Duchess of Orleans, a maternal cousin of Prince Albert, and
for the perfect Louise, the truthful, unselfish second wife of
Leopold, King o