gave a peculiar glow to all she felt.  After years of emptiness and dullness and suppression, she had come suddenly, in the heyday of youth, into freedom and power.  She was mistress of herself, of great domains and palaces; she was Queen of England.  Responsibilities and difficulties she might have, no doubt, and in heavy measure; but one feeling dominated and absorbed all others—­the feeling of joy.  Everything pleased her.  She was in high spirits from morning till night.  Mr. Creevey, grown old now, and very near his end, catching a glimpse of her at Brighton, was much amused, in his sharp fashion, by the ingenuous gaiety of “little Vic.”  “A more homely little being you never beheld, when she is at her ease, and she is evidently dying to be always more so.  She laughs in real earnest, opening her mouth as wide as it can go, showing not very pretty gums...  She eats quite as heartily as she laughs, I think I may say she gobbles...  She blushes and laughs every instant in so natural a way as to disarm anybody.”  But it was not merely when she was laughing or gobbling that she enjoyed herself; the performance of her official duties gave her intense satisfaction.  “I really have immensely to do,” she wrote in her Journal a few days after her accession; “I receive so many communications from my Ministers, but I like it very much.”  And again, a week later, “I repeat what I said before that I have so many communications from the Ministers, and from me to them, and I get so many papers to sign every day, that I have always a very great deal to do.  I delight in this work.”  Through the girl’s immaturity the vigorous predestined tastes of the woman were pushing themselves into existence with eager velocity, with delicious force.

One detail of her happy situation deserves particular mention.  Apart from the splendour of her social position and the momentousness of her political one, she was a person of great wealth.  As soon as Parliament met, an annuity of L385,000 was settled upon her.  When the expenses of her household had been discharged, she was left with L68,000 a year of her own.  She enjoyed besides the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster, which amounted annually to over L27,000.  The first use to which she put her money was characteristic:  she paid off her father’s debts.  In money matters, no less than in other matters, she was determined to be correct.  She had the instincts of a man of business; and she never could have borne to be in a position that was financially unsound.

With youth and happiness gilding every hour, the days passed merrily enough.  And each day hinged upon Lord Melbourne.  Her diary shows us, with undiminished clarity, the life of the young sovereign during the early months of her reign—­a life satisfactorily regular, full of delightful business, a life of simple pleasures, mostly physical—­riding, eating, dancing—­a quick, easy, highly unsophisticated life, sufficient unto itself.  The light of the