w warmly he recognised her sincerity, frankness,
straight-forwardness, and love of truth. On the other side, his own eager
mobility, versatility, and wide elastic range was not likely to be to the
taste of a personage with a singular fixity of nature. Then the Queen was
by the necessity of her station a politician, as was Elizabeth or George
III., although oddly enough she had a bitter dislike of what she thought
the madness of "women's rights." As politician, she often took views that
were not shared either by the constituencies or by the ministers whom the
constituencies imposed upon her. The Queen in truth excellently
represented and incorporated in her proper person one whole set of those
qualities in our national character, on which the power of her realm had
been built up. Mr. Gladstone stood for a different and in some aspects and
on some occasions almost an antagonistic set of national qualities. The
Queen, according to those who knew her well,(276) dreaded what in the
eighteenth century they called enthusiasm: she dreaded or disdained it in
religion, and in politics almost more. Yet her Englishmen are full of
capacity for enthusiasm, and the Scots for whom she had such cordial
affection have enthusiasm in measure fuller still. Unhappily, in the case
of Ireland that occupied so much of Mr. Gladstone's life, her sympathies
with his long and vigorous endeavour notoriously stood at zero. The
Queen's loyalty to the constitution and to ministers in office was
unquestioned, but she was not well placed, nor was she perhaps by
character well fitted, to gauge the fluctuating movements of an age of
change, as it was the duty of her statesmen to gauge and plumb them. If a
cabinet with the confidence of the House of Commons decides upon a policy,
it must obviously be a premier's duty to persist, and in that duty Mr.
Gladstone was resolute. If he had been otherwise, he knew that he would be
falling short in loyalty to the country, and to its chief magistrate most
of all.

In 1871 a wave of critical feeling began to run upon the throne. An
influential journalist of that day, singularly free from any tincture of
republican sentiment, thus describes it. "A few weeks ago," he says, "a
deep and universal feeling of discontent at the Queen's seclusion (or
rather at its consequences) found voice in the journals of the country. No
public print of any importance failed to take part in the chorus; which
was equally remarkable for its s