morning is upon it; and, in the rosy radiance, the figure of “Lord M.” emerges, glorified and supreme.  If she is the heroine of the story, he is the hero; but indeed they are more than hero and heroine, for there are no other characters at all.  Lehzen, the Baron, Uncle Leopold, are unsubstantial shadows—­the incidental supers of the piece.  Her paradise was peopled by two persons, and surely that was enough.  One sees them together still, a curious couple, strangely united in those artless pages, under the magical illumination of that dawn of eighty years ago:  the polished high fine gentleman with the whitening hair and whiskers and the thick dark eyebrows and the mobile lips and the big expressive eyes; and beside him the tiny Queen—­fair, slim, elegant, active, in her plain girl’s dress and little tippet, looking up at him earnestly, adoringly, with eyes blue and projecting, and half-open mouth.  So they appear upon every page of the Journal; upon every page Lord M. is present, Lord M. is speaking, Lord M. is being amusing, instructive, delightful, and affectionate at once, while Victoria drinks in the honied words, laughs till she shows her gums, tries hard to remember, and runs off, as soon as she is left alone, to put it all down.  Their long conversations touched upon a multitude of topics.  Lord M. would criticise books, throw out a remark or two on the British Constitution, make some passing reflections on human life, and tell story after story of the great people of the eighteenth century.  Then there would be business a despatch perhaps from Lord Durham in Canada, which Lord M. would read.  But first he must explain a little.  “He said that I must know that Canada originally belonged to the French, and was only ceded to the English in 1760, when it was taken in an expedition under Wolfe:  ‘a very daring enterprise,’ he said.  Canada was then entirely French, and the British only came afterwards...  Lord M. explained this very clearly (and much better than I have done) and said a good deal more about it.  He then read me Durham’s despatch, which is a very long one and took him more than 1/2 an hour to read.  Lord M. read it beautifully with that fine soft voice of his, and with so much expression, so that it is needless to say I was much interested by it.”  And then the talk would take a more personal turn.  Lord M. would describe his boyhood, and she would learn that “he wore his hair long, as all boys then did, till he was 17; (how handsome he must have looked!).”  Or she would find out about his queer tastes and habits—­how he never carried a watch, which seemed quite extraordinary.  “’I always ask the servant what o’clock it is, and then he tells me what he likes,’ said Lord M.”  Or, as the rooks wheeled about round the trees, “in a manner which indicated rain,” he would say that he could sit looking at them for an hour, and “was quite surprised at my disliking them.  M. said, ‘The rooks are my delight.’”