Queen at Windsor Castle. After dinner, "the Queen sat down to chess with the Queen of the Belgians. Her Majesty had never played before; Lord Melbourne told her how to move, and Lord Palmerston also assisted her. I looked on for some time without taking part in the game, and I might as well have abstained altogether, for when Melbourne and Palmerston gave up advising her Majesty, in order that I might succeed to them, I did not succeed better than my colleagues. I was very near winning the game, when I lost it by an oversight, and by being very often asked by her Majesty, 'What must I do?' There was also some little confusion created by the two queens on the board and the two queens at the table. Her Majesty was not so discouraged by her defeat as to prevent her playing again the evening after this. Who played for the Queen I do not know; but her Majesty ran up to me laughing, and saying she had won. She asked me how she came to lose yesterday. I replied, 'Because your Majesty has such bad advisers;' on which she laughed heartily, and so did the Queen of the Belgians, who, by the way, spoke English well."-Lord Broughton's Recollections of a Long Life, privately printed; quoted in the Daily News.

FIRST COUNCIL OF QUEEN VICTORIA.

Upon the death of William the Fourth, the Privy Council was immediately summoned to proclaim his successor. Mr. Hobhouse was present by official right and title. He relates that Lord Lansdowne, as President of the Council, accompanied by Lord Melbourne, the Duke of Cumberland, the Duke of Sussex, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the Lord Chancellor, went to inform the Princess Victoria of her accession to the throne. Soon afterwards the doors of the Council Chamber were thrown open. "The Dukes of Cumberland and Sussex advanced to receive her Majesty, and the young creature walked in, and took her seat in the arm-chair. She was very plainly dressed in mourning, a black scarf round her neck, without any cap or ornament on her head; but her hair was braided tastefully on the top of her head. She inclined herself gracefully on taking her seat. The Royal Dukes, the Archbishops, the Lord Chancellor, and the Duke of Wellington were on the right of her Majesty; Lords Lansdowne and Melbourne were on her left. Soon after she was seated, Lord Melbourne stepped forward and presented her with a paper, from which she read her declaration. She went through this difficult task with the utmost grace and propriety; neither tog

timid nor too assured. Her voice was rather subdued, but not faltering, pronouncing all the words clearly, and seeming to feel the sense of what she spoke. Every one appeared touched by her manner, particularly the Duke of Wellington and Lord Melbourne. I saw some tears in the eyes of the latter. The only person who was rather more curious than affected was Lord Lyndhurst, who looked over her Majesty's right shoulder as she was reading, as if to see that she read all that was set down for her. After reading the declaration, her Majesty took the usual oath, which was administered to her by Mr. Charles Greville, Clerk of the Council, who, by the way, let the Prayerbook drop. The Queen then subscribed the oath, and a duplicate of it for Scotland. She was designated in the beginning of the oath 'Alexandrina Victoria,' but she signed herself 'Victoria R.' Her handwriting was good. Several of the Council, Lord Lyndhurst, the Duke of Cumberland, and the Duke of Wellington, came to look at the signature, as if to discover what her accomplishments in that department were." At the close of the long account from which this is a brief extract, Mr. Hobhouse adds an extract written in his diary on the day of the accession:-"It is impossible to speak too highly of the Queen's demeanour and conduct during the whole ceremony. They deserve all that has been said of them by all parties, and must have been the offspring, not of art, nor of education, but of a noble nature, to use the wording of the well-turned eulogy pronounced upon them by Sir Robert Peel."-Lord Broughton's Recollections of a Long Life, privately printed; quoted in the Daily News.

PEEL AS A STATESMAN.

When Sir Robert Peel brought forward the Catholic Relief Bill in the Commons, in 1829, his speech was not only powerful at the time, but it is interesting now as revealing what may be called the cardinal principle of Peel's career as a statesman. "We are placed," he said, "in a position in which we cannot remain. We cannot continue stationary. There is an evil in divided cabinets and distracted counsels which cannot be longer tolerated. Supposing this to be established, and supposing it to be conceded that a united government must be formed, in the next place, I say that government must choose one of two courses. They must advance or they must recede. They must grant further political privileges to the Roman Catholics, or they must retract those already given. . I am asked what new light has broken in upon me? Why I see a necessity for concession now which was not evident before?

The same events, I am told, have happened before, and therefore the same consequences ought to follow. Is this the fact? Are events in politics like equal quantities in numbers or mathematics, always the same? Are they, like the great abstract truths of morality, eternal and invariable in their application? May not the recurrence-the continued recurrence of the very event totally alter its character, at least its practical results?" Peel, on this occasion spoke out, as a statesman, the general sense of the nation; and the Emancipation Act, after running the guantlet of the Upper House, became law. It has been well said of Peel, that his political genius consisted in perceiving when the necessity for carrying a great social change arose, and in devising the parliamentary means for carrying it.

When the Duke of Wellington sought to express what seemed to him most admirable in the character of Sir Robert Peel, he said that he was the truest man he had ever known; adding, "I was long connected with him in public life. We were both in the councils of our sovereign together, and I had long the honour to enjoy his private friendship. In all the course of my acquaintance with Sir Robert Peel, I never knew a man in whose truth and justice I had a more lively confidence, or in whom I saw a more invariable desire to promote the public : service. In the whole course of my communication with him I never knew an instance in which he did not show the strongest :attachment to truth; and I never saw, in the whole course of my life, the smallest reason for suspecting that he stated anything which he did not firmly believe to be the fact.”

Sir George Cornewall Lewis has left this emphatic estimate of Peel: He did not see far before him; he was not ready in applying theory to practice; he did not foresee the coming storm; but when it had come, there was no man who dealt with it so well as he did. For concocting, producing, explaining, and defending measures he had no equal, or anything like an equal. There was nothing simile aut secundum. When a thing was to be done he did it better than anybody. The misfortune was that he saw the right thing too late; and went on opposing it when men of less powerful minds saw clearly what was the proper course."

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

We find, in the Second Supplement to the Penny Cyclopædia, the following dispassionate estimate of the character of the great Duke of Wellington :

"The leading characteristic of the Duke of Wellington's

mind seems to have been sound good sense, based on practical examination into details, and a careful study of the whole, in order to arrive at a right conclusion. He made allowance for contingencies, passions, interests, estimated things at their real value, and was rarely wrong. His great principle of action seems to have been a sense of duty rather than the stimulus of glory and ambition. His manner was in general singularly calm. He never seemed to be elated by success nor depressed by discouragements or difficulties. Quickness of decision and energy of execution marked his character during the whole of his life. He was not inflexible, however, in carrying out his plans as a commander, or his views as a statesman; but altered his course when new information or a change of circumstances offered a sufficient reason for a change of determination. He was regular in his attendance in the House of Lords, and spoke frequently. His influence over the members of that House was such as probably has never been possessed by any other individual. As a public speaker, his delivery, without being fluent or rapid, was emphatic and vehement. In private life he was simple and methodical. He was temperate in the use of food and wine, slept on a hair mattress on a simple camp bedstead, was an early riser, and was indefatigable in his attention to business. He seldom made use of a carriage, and continued to ride on horseback when, from the infirmities of age, he could no longer sit erect; and he also used the exercise of walking even to the last, though his steps were slow and faltering.

In the grounds and shrubbery of Apsley House the Duke took daily walking exercise, where, with a garden-engine, he was wont to enjoy exertion.*

JOSEPH HUME,

Born at Montrose, in 1777, and apprenticed in his fourteenth year to a surgeon, distinguished himself not only in his medical capacity, but also by acting as a purser on his voyage out to India, and conducting a complicated business in a very successful manner. On reaching India, he mastered the native languages; and in addition to his functions as an army surgeon, he became Persian interpreter, commissary general, and paymaster and postmaster of the forces in the prize agencies. He owed the first step of his promotion to his knowledge of chemistry, which enabled him to detect the presence of damp in the

* Jan. 2, 1820.-General Bonaparte was "amusing himself with the pipe of the fireengine, spouting water on the trees and flowers in his favourite garden."-Journal of Captain Nicholas: Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena; Sir Hudson Low's Letters and Journals, 1855.

Government stores of gunpowder on the eve of Lord Lake's Mahratta war. The amount of hard work performed by the young civilian at this time was immense, and its success enabled him to return to England in the prime of life with a fortune of about £30,000. He then studied the history and resources of Great Britain, and visited the Continent to increase his political experience, as the foundation of his subsequent exertions in the cause of Reform. He sat in Parliament, with few intervals, from 1813 to his death.

For many years Mr. Hume stood nearly alone in the House of Commons as the advocate of Financial Reform; indeed, in the cause of the reduction of taxation and public expenditure, no man ever did so much practical good as Joseph Hume. Disregarding the fashions of the age and the opinions of the world, he adhered in the smallest matters to what he thought just and right. In most of the political and social movements of a quarter of a century he was an important actor; the working man ate bread which he helped to cheapen, walked through parks which he helped to procure for him, and procured for him great educational advantages. He more than once refused to accept office under Liberal governments. His speeches in Parliament occupy in bulk several volumes of Hansard's Debates. He incessantly advocated reform in our army, navy, and ordnance departments, of the Established Church and Ecclesiastical Courts, and of the general system of taxation and public accounts. He early advocated the abolition of military flogging, naval impressment, and imprisonment for debt. With little active assistance he carried the repeal of the old combination laws, the laws for prohibiting the export of machinery, and the Act for preventing mechanics from going abroad. He was unceasing in his attacks on colonial and municipal abuses, election expenses, the licensing systems, and the duties on paper and printing. He took an active part in Roman Catholic Emancipation, the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and in the passing of the Reform Act of 1832. A remarkable passage in his life was his discovery, in 1835, of an extensive Orange plot, commencing before the reign of William IV. Mr. Hume died on the 20th of February, 1855. As a proof of the general esteem in which he was held, we may add, that in the House of Commons speakers of all parties took occasion to pay a tribute to his character.-Abridged from Penny Cyclopædia, Supp. 2.