Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/35

Rh nature would have resented the place of her own child being filled by another; but Queen Adelaide showed none of this littleness, and welcomed her niece with cordiality to her rightful place beside the throne. When the second of Queen Adelaide's own little girls died, she wrote to the Duchess of Kent, "My children are dead, but yours lives, and she is mine, too!" The simple words give the note of a truly noble nature. In 1831, when King William prorogued his first Parliament, Queen Adelaide and Princess Victoria watched from the windows of the Palace the progress of the Royal procession. "The people cheered the Queen lustily, but, forgetting herself, that gracious lady took the young Princess Victoria by the hand, led her to the front of the balcony, and introduced her to the happy and loyal multitude." On several other occasions Queen Adelaide showed a noble, queenly, and motherly spirit towards the young Princess. In 1837 and onwards, Queen Victoria was able, by a number of little nameless acts of kindness and of love, to cheer and sooth the declining years of the Queen Dowager.