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

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LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 1868.

Fon the second time has Her MAJESTY invited
ner subjects to listen to the story of her life. A
part of that story we have had already. With
admirable frankness, the QUEEN has already told
us the history of her early womanhood, her court-
ship, her first experience as a Queen, and of her
marriage ; and has recited much of her own life
ral it was linked with the life of the PitrNem
CONSORT. In that volume and in this the QUEEN
has done a great deal more to introduce us to
herself than if the gates of Windsor Castle had
been thrown wide open and everyboay made free
to enter her presence at pleasure. Fcsr the volume
just published, with that which preceded it, is very
much of an autobiography, giving not merely the
occurrences of a life—the outward circumstances
and scenes through which the QUEEN has passed—
but at the same time a free and unreserved
and often a minute record of the reflections and
feelings which these occasioned. The merit, in-
deed, of these volumes is not so much that they
were transcribed by a Royal hand, as that they
photograph a Royal heart, and the great charm
they possess is that each reader feels the workings
of that heart to be such as those of his own and
as every other heart in the world would be. They
contain that touch of nature which makes the whole
world kin.

The book which Her MAJESTY has just given us
is in every sense of the word a journal—a record
inscribed day after day, by her own hand, of the
events of her private life from 184 S to 1861. It
is, as it professes to be, in the main an account of
" Our Life in the Highlands," with a few brief
notes of earlier visits to Scotland, tours in England
and Ireland, and yachting excursions. The portion
of the work allotted to Scotland accords with Her
MAJESTY'S well-known love for her Highland
home. Those who know that " land of the
mountain and the flood "—who have, like the
QUEEN, been " enchanted " with the beauty
of Modern Athens—paused to admire the
picturesque scenery of Strathearn, rowed across
the deep lochs of the West, toiled over the huge
fastnesses of the Grampians, listened to the echoes
in the magic chambers of Staffa, or can rccal the
deep solitudes of the Highlands, and enjoy, as the
QUEEN did, the simplicity of the people and the
solemnity *of' their worship, will be able with this
book in hand "to do Scotland again ;" while
those to whom North Britain is a terra incognita
will divine the secret of Her MAJESTY'S love of it.
To her the hills are " dear, dear Highlands." She
loves even their solitudes : " these were," she writes,
" a quiet, a retirement, a wildness, a liberty, and a
solitude that had such a charm for us." This un-
feigned love of nature, and even of solitude, has
in Her MAJESTY nothing of the ascetic. On
the whole, Dr. JOHNSON'S preference of Cheapside
to the romantic hills of Wales was far better than
the excess of the opposite feeling by so much as
it concerns us to love human nature more
than the mere material of the world. But
these feelings are not incompatible ; in Her
MAJESTY they are happily blended. With the
Highlands she associates the Highlanders ; you
can hardly detach from the sketch of a natural
beauty the references sure to be drawn in of living
persons. And these are not only great lords and
ladies, but gardeners, grooms, and gillies—a Scotch
fishwife, a common soldier, or a Gaelic boatman.
Common, ordinary, everyday-life people take promi-
nent places in Her MAJESTY'S pages, and many of
them will, perhaps, learn now for the first
time how real and deep was the interest of the first
lady of the land in their short and simple annals.
To us, we confess, these incidental references are
the gems of the volume that glitter on the pages
just as the small crystals of the precious metals
shine from a piece of rock. We scarcely need to
be told by Mr. ARTHUR HELPS, the editor, of the
feeling with which Tler MAJESTY regards her
people, and that no one 'desires more than she
the oneness of the nation—" that there should
be no abrupt severance of class from class,
but rather a gradual blending of all classes, caused
by a full community of interests, a constant inter-
change of good offices, and a kindly respect felt
and expressed by each class to all its brethren in
the great brotherhood which forms the nation."
For what feeling is so likely to be associated with
the genuine admiration of GOD'S works as that of
the unity of GOD'S family? NAPOLEON, in dying,
was superstitious enough to suppose that GOD had
sent a comet to presage his departure—a prodigy
for a prodigy. The association was not wholly
unnatural ; but for those whose souls are in har-
mony with nature and its design, mere human
distinctions fade away, as they do in this volume,
before a purer light.
The editor of the QUEEN'S " Journal " asks,
"What would not the historian give to have simi-
lar materials within his reach when writing about
the reigns of the great Queen ELIZABETH or the
good Queen ANNE ?" The query is a very natural
one ; for the historian of subsequent centuries
the writings of Queen VICTORIA will possess a
great historical value. But they possess a
value to the present generation, to the QUEEN'S
subjects. The fact that she has taken the nation
into her confidence, and shared with us all her joys
and her sorrows, has a great moral significance.
Next to the purity of her Court, few things could
have a more healthy effect on the tone of society,
on the bearing of its classes towards each other, than
this journal of the QUEEN'S. Just as the career of one
man may fire a whole nation with enthusiasm, so the
example of Her MAJESTY, with its homelipess, her
writings, with their freedom from affectation, and
her pleasures, which are greatest in those things
common to us all, must tend to give a more just,
and at the same time elevated, sense of human
life and its objects. The reader would miss the
spirit of this book who did not rise from it feelinr,
that " a man's life consisteth not in the abundance°,
of the things which he possesseth." We scarcely
venture to refer to one subject, however, of which
the title, " Our Life," and every page of this journal,
reminds us. Balmoral and the Highlands are not
now to the Queen what they were. Her MAJESTY
had a strange misgiving in 1861 that the autumnal
visit would be the last of an important character to
Scotland. In 1867 she adds to a sketch a note, in
capitals, referring to this journey, "IT WAS OUR
LAST ONE." Of the grief which these words com-
memorate there is no obtrusion. How deeply it is

felt we kilaijOii wvll,