be regarded as an eccentricity; but, no doubt, it was an eccentricity on the right side.  The middle classes, firm in the triple brass of their respectability, rejoiced with a special joy over the most respectable of Queens.  They almost claimed her, indeed, as one of themselves; but this would have been an exaggeration.  For, though many of her characteristics were most often found among the middle classes, in other respects—­in her manners, for instance—­Victoria was decidedly aristocratic.  And, in one important particular, she was neither aristocratic nor middle-class:  her attitude toward herself was simply regal.

Such qualities were obvious and important; but, in the impact of a personality, it is something deeper, something fundamental and common to all its qualities, that really tells.  In Victoria, it is easy to discern the nature of this underlying element:  it was a peculiar sincerity.  Her truthfulness, her single-mindedness, the vividness of her emotions and her unrestrained expression of them, were the varied forms which this central characteristic assumed.  It was her sincerity which gave her at once her impressiveness, her charm, and her absurdity.  She moved through life with the imposing certitude of one to whom concealment was impossible—­either towards her surroundings or towards herself.  There she was, all of her—­the Queen of England, complete and obvious; the world might take her or leave her; she had nothing more to show, or to explain, or to modify; and, with her peerless carriage, she swept along her path.  And not only was concealment out of the question; reticence, reserve, even dignity itself, as it sometimes seemed, might be very well dispensed with.  As Lady Lyttelton said:  “There is a transparency in her truth that is very striking—­not a shade of exaggeration in describing feelings or facts; like very few other people I ever knew.  Many may be as true, but I think it goes often along with some reserve.  She talks all out; just as it is, no more and no less.”  She talked all out; and she wrote all out, too.  Her letters, in the surprising jet of their expression, remind one of a turned-on tap.  What is within pours forth in an immediate, spontaneous rush.  Her utterly unliterary style has at least the merit of being a vehicle exactly suited to her thoughts and feelings; and even the platitude of her phraseology carries with it a curiously personal flavour.  Undoubtedly it was through her writings that she touched the heart of the public.  Not only in her “Highland Journals” where the mild chronicle of her private proceedings was laid bare without a trace either of affectation or of embarrassment, but also in those remarkable messages to the nation which, from time to time, she published in the newspapers, her people found her very close to them indeed.  They felt instinctively Victoria’s irresistible sincerity, and they responded.  And in truth it was an endearing trait.