: "Not at all; it elevates it by the contrast it offers between
the present and the defunct state of affairs." But this adroit defence
failed to make any impression upon Victoria; and Mr. Reeve, when he
retired from the public service, did not receive the knighthood which
custom entitled him to expect. Perhaps if the Queen had known how many
caustic comments upon herself Mr. Reeve had quietly suppressed in the
published Memoirs, she would have been almost grateful to him; but, in
that case, what would she have said of Greville? Imagination boggles at
the thought. As for more modern essays upon the same topic, Her Majesty,
it is to be feared, would have characterised them as "not discreet."

But as a rule the leisure hours of that active life were occupied with
recreations of a less intangible quality than the study of literature or
the appreciation of art. Victoria was a woman not only of vast property
but of innumerable possessions. She had inherited an immense quantity
of furniture, of ornaments, of china, of plate, of valuable objects of
every kind; her purchases, throughout a long life, made a formidable
addition to these stores; and there flowed in upon her, besides, from
every quarter of the globe, a constant stream of gifts. Over this
enormous mass she exercised an unceasing and minute supervision, and the
arrangement and the contemplation of it, in all its details, filled her
with an intimate satisfaction. The collecting instinct has its roots in
the very depths of human nature; and, in the case of Victoria, it seemed
to owe its force to two of her dominating impulses--the intense sense,
which had always been hers, of her own personality, and the craving
which, growing with the years, had become in her old age almost an
obsession, for fixity, for solidity, for the setting up of palpable
barriers against the outrages of change and time. When she considered
the multitudinous objects which belonged to her, or, better still, when,
choosing out some section of them as the fancy took her, she actually
savoured the vivid richness of their individual qualities, she saw
herself deliciously reflected from a million facets, felt herself
magnified miraculously over a boundless area, and was well pleased.
That was just as it should be; but then came the dismaying
thought--everything slips away, crumbles, vanishes; Sevres
dinner-services get broken; even golden basins go unaccountably astray;
even one's self, with all the reco