For a while the Albertine practice had kept its sway; vigilant, impartial, ...

For a while the Albertine practice had kept its sway; vigilant, impartial, imperturbable. Then a character, long suppressed, gradually lifted its head: vigilant indeed, laborious, fearlessly truthful: but excitable, impassioned and self-willed: Melbourne's Victoria, grown middle-aged; respected for her virtues and pitied for her sorrows, rather than loved, as she was hereafter to be loved by a people to who her Consort had become a dim figure of their fathers' time: who had long forgiven, if ever they remembered, the acerbity of her warfare with one Minister, the too compliant ear she turned to the Imperial wiles of another.

In 1870 perhaps the most general, though secret, opinion among thoughtful observers was that the virtues of its wearer would preserve the Crown for one successor, hardly for more than one.

Professed or active republicans were few, and the spectacle of Paris had diminished their numbers: but the scandalized horror with which the Commons howled down Auberon Herbert's avowal of his principles in 1872 may have masked a certain misgiving.

Republican simplicity is appropriate to a Republic: but a Court which does not allure the intelligent, attract the smart, or dazzle the many, makes the worst of both worlds if it is not frugal as well: and Victoria's demands for dowries and allowances were unconscionable. Fifty-three members voted to reduce the grant to Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, and the invective with which Gladstone met Dilke's request for light upon the Civil List was heard in a glum silence on the Liberal benches.