Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/43

Rh shops, and for the heir to such a crown as that of England, quite unnecessarily pretty and interesting."

Carlyle, in a private letter to his brother (April, 1838), gave a vivid picture of the girl-Queen as he saw her then:—

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Writing of a later period, Baroness Bunsen, describing the scene in the House of Lords at the opening of Parliament in 1842, says:—

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These last words exactly describe Her Majesty's bearing in age as well as in youth; and it is this, her intellectual grasp of the situation she fills as the highest officer of the State and the wearer of the crown of the Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts, that renders her dignity so entirely independent of mere trappings and finery. It has been remarked that on the occasion of her public appearances, the Queen may have been the worst-dressed lady present, and have had by her side or in the immediate background a