The Express.
London, England, 1868-01-11 00:00:00

HIGH RATIN AT LONDON HMG&

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LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 11.

A SIMPLE record of simple joys—the story of
the even life of a good woman, a happy wife, and
tender mother—has been laid before the people
of England by the highest Lady in the land. The
occasion and the work are so exceptional as to
disarm criticism. What has been set down was
not act down fur the public, and if now printed
for the public it has been partly in order to pre-,,
vent a private circulation from creating myste-
ries and suggesting falsehood. It is essen-
tially a private and domestic record, in which
the little incidents of a Highland tour are the
meat exciting scenes. Hundreds of journals pro-
bably exist in which similar journeys are narrated
in language equally unstudied. The fresh impres-
sions which a now people, glorious scenery, a
ruder and less constrained life than usual, have
made upon the mind of an intelligent and culti-
vated lady, are all the claims to literary favour
which, had it come from another pen, the
volume could have presented. These would have
sufficed to make it a cherished memorial of happy
stays in the author's own family, whosoever she
might have been. But they would not have
justified its publication. The reason for this,
and the circumstances which will make this work
perused with interest in every English home,
lie apart from its literary or [esthetic merits.
They depend on the social position of the Lady
who has thus frankly taken the public into her
confidence. The fact that the highest in birth
and the supreme in rank, the SOVEREIGN of the
widest and most powerful empire in the world, the
bead of a Court in which all ceremonial has for
sole object to do her honour, has thus invited her
subjects to see how the woman lives under the
trappings of the Queen, how the heart of Royalty
beats with all the emotions that agitate the human
breast, how the forms and responsibilities of
State are burdens which are flung oil with the
same gladness with which the hardest workers
welcome the holiday of labour,—this is the peculiir
interest of the book, and in this lies the lesson
which, more or less directly, it will teach to all its
readers.

Nor can there be doubt that the lesson will do
good. Advancing civilization and augmenting
wealth are working changes in our social state
which call for some correction such as this work is
fitted to supply. On the one hand, the mass of
the people are becoming more enlightened ; on the
other, the higher classes are growing more &dia-
-0 The old sentiment of k.:441+7 Wte.l nougiit
of the Sovereign 6i a grand personage who always
wore a gold crown, and was unlike any other
mortal, is disappearing befare the march of the
alphabet and the newspaper. Rulers are now
measured by their lives rather than by their birth.
To show to the nation how much of personal
worth, of kindly disposition, of family affection, is
found in the household that is highest in the
realm, makes a new tie between Prince and
people. All the more needed, perhaps, because of
the need that there is to read a different lesson to
the sections of society whom wealth and refinement
tend to corrupt. The influence of a prodigious
development of riches in a single class is inevi.-
ably evil. Without seekirg to analyse eta
operation on the individual, its o ovious
tendency is t) separate class from class, to aggra-
vate the vices which are moat conspicuous and
most invidious, and to embitter the views which
the inferiors in station take of those who are
above them. Against all this evil the Queen's
book is a standing protest. It shows how little
true nobility depends on artificial state. It points
out how the simplest pleasures are dearer and
higher than any that wealth can procure. It
marks the broad line between the necessary duties
and even display that belong to lofty functions,
and the home enjoyments in which true happiness
is found. It rebukes at once the impatience that
seeks for distraction in excitement, and the vanity
that demands personal admiration as a tribute due
to the accidents of superior station. Nothing is
found here to sanction the lavish outlay in luxu-
ries, the wild extravagance in dress, the loose
recklessness of manners and morals which, across
the Channel, seem almost to call for another revo-
lution to purify the air, and which from their
taint even in our own land form a subject of pain-
ful contemplation to those who desire the stability
of our social institutions.
But while this book will be a useful and bene-
ficial suggestive in these respects, they form after
all only its secondary result The first purpose
it will serve is that which probably alone was de-