She herself declared that she never discussed public affairs with the Queen, that she was concerned with private matters only--with private letters and the details of private life.

Certainly her hand is everywhere discernible in Victoria's early correspondence.

The Journal is written in the style of a child; the Letters are not so simple; they are the work of a child, rearranged--with the minimum of alteration, no doubt, and yet perceptibly--by a governess.

And the governess was no fool: narrow, jealous, provincial, she might be; but she was an acute and vigorous woman, who had gained by a peculiar insight, a peculiar ascendancy.

That ascendancy she meant to keep.