Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/609

 popularity and augured well for the new reign. The Irish opposition was mainly due to a feeling of resentment at the refusal of the government to alter the old terms of the sovereign's accession oath, in which while declaring himself a protestant he cast, in the view of Roman catholics, insult on their faith. Nowhere was there any sign of personal hostility to the new ruler.

The king came to the throne in his sixtieth year endowed with a personality of singular charm and geniality, large worldly experience, wide acquaintance with men and women, versatile interests in society, and philanthropy, enthusiasm for sport, business habits, and a resolve to serve his people to the best of his ability. Among the king's friends there were fears that he would prove himself unequal to his new station, but the anticipations were signally belied. His mother's deliberate exclusion of him from political work placed him under some disadvantages. He was a stranger to the administrative details of his great office and he was too old to repair the neglect of a political training. Nor was he of an age at which it was easy to alter his general mode of life. He cherished a high regard for his mother's statesmanship and political acumen, but he had no full knowledge of the precise manner in which they had been exercised. At the outset there were slight indications that he over-estimated the sovereign's power. In consultation over a king's speech he seemed in some peril of misinterpreting the royal function. But his action was due to inexperience and to no impatience of ministerial advice. Despite his share in two royal commissions he had never studied deeply domestic legislation, and about it he held no well-defined views. He had watched more closely the course of foreign politics. His constant habit of travel, his careful maintenance of good relations with his large foreign kindred, his passion for making the personal acquaintance of interesting men and women on the continent, gave him much knowledge of foreign affairs both political and social. Yet the diplomatic details of foreign policy lay outside his range of study. While he was desirous of full information from his ministers, he soon came to view them as responsible experts whose procedure was rarely matter for much personal comment. The minutes of each cabinet meeting, with which the prime minister supplied the sovereign, usually provoked from Queen Victoria's pen voluminous criticism. King Edward VII usually accepted the prime minister's notes without remark, or if he was moved to avowal of acquiescence or remonstrance, he resorted to a short personal interview. The immense correspondence between the sovereign and the prime minister which continued during Queen Victoria's reign almost ceased, and its place, so far as it was filled at all, was taken by verbal intercourse, of which the king took no note. To appointments and the bestowal of honours he paid closer attention than to legislative measures or details of policy, and he was never neglectful of the interests of his personal friends, but even there he easily and as a rule gracefully yielded his wishes to ministerial counsel. His punctual habits enabled him to do all the formal business that was required of him with despatch. In signing papers and in dealing with urgent correspondence he was a model of promptitude. No arrears accumulated, and although the routine tried his patience, he performed it with exemplary regularity. He encouraged more modern technical methods than his mother had approved. He accepted type-written memoranda from ministers, instead of obliging them as in the late reign to write out everything in their own hands. He communicated with ministers through his chief secretary more frequently than had been customary before. Although he was for most of his life a voluminous letter writer, his penmanship greatly deteriorated in his last years and grew difficult to decipher. When the situation did not admit of an oral communication, he preferred to use a secretary's pen.

It was inevitable that his place in the sphere of government should differ from that of his mother. Queen Victoria for the greater part of her reign was a widow and a recluse, who divided all her thought with unremitting application  between politics and family  affairs. The new king had wider interests, Without his mother's power of concentration or her tenacity of purpose, he distributed his energies over a more extended field. On acceding to his new dignity there was no lessening of his earlier devotion to sport, society, and other forms of amusement. He was faithful to his old circle of intimate friends and neither reduced nor extended it. His new official duties failed to absorb his whole attention. But it was in the revived splendours and developments of royal ceremonial that to the public eye