the sole view of promoting your Majesty's public
interests and private happiness.

Lord Melbourne hopes, and indeed ventures to expect, that your
Majesty, upon reflection and consideration of the real state of
circumstances, will recover your spirits, and Lord Melbourne has
himself great satisfaction in thinking upon the consideration of
the advice which he has given, that it has not tended to impair your
Majesty's influence and authority, but, on the contrary, to secure to
your Majesty the affection, attachment, approbation, and support of
all parties.

In the course of this correspondence Lord Melbourne has thought it his
duty to your Majesty to express himself with great freedom upon
the characters of many individuals, whose names have come under
consideration, but Lord Melbourne thinks it right to say that he may
have spoken upon insufficient grounds, that he may have been mistaken,
and that the persons in question may turn out to be far better than he
has been induced to represent them.

[Footnote 86: A Council had been held at Claremont for the
outgoing Ministers to give up their Seals of Office, which
were bestowed upon Sir Robert Peel and the incoming Cabinet.]

[Pageheading: MELBOURNE ON THE NEW MINISTRY]

_Viscount Melbourne to Queen Victoria._

SOUTH STREET, _4th September 1841._

Lord Melbourne presents his humble duty to your Majesty. He was most
happy to hear yesterday the best account of everything that had taken
place at Claremont. Everybody praised, in the highest manner, the
dignity, propriety, and kindness of your Majesty's deportment, and if
it can be done without anything of deceit or dissimulation, it is well
to take advantage of the powers and qualities which have been given,
and which are so well calculated to gain a fair and powerful influence
over the minds and feelings of others. Your Majesty may depend upon
it, that the impression made upon the minds of all who were present
yesterday, is most favourable. Of course, with persons in new and
rather awkward situations, some of whom had never been in high office
before, all of whom had not been so now for some years, there was a
good deal of embarrassment and mistakes. Forms which are only gone
through at long intervals of time, and not every day, are necessarily
forgotten, and when they are required nobody knows them. But Lord
Melbourne cannot really think that they looked cross; most probably
they did look shy and em