she put her faith in "the liberties of the People." It was certain that
the young Princess would be brought up in the way that she should go;
yet there, close behind the throne, waiting, sinister, was the Duke of
Cumberland. Brougham, looking forward into the future in his scurrilous
fashion, hinted at dreadful possibilities. "I never prayed so heartily
for a Prince before," he wrote, on hearing that George IV had been
attacked by illness. "If he had gone, all the troubles of these villains
(the Tory Ministers) went with him, and they had Fred. I (the Duke of
York) their own man for his life. He (Fred. I) won't live long either;
that Prince of Blackguards, 'Brother William,' is as bad a life, so
we come in the course of nature to be ASSASSINATED by King Ernest I or
Regent Ernest (the Duke of Cumberland)." Such thoughts were not peculiar
to Brougham; in the seething state of public feeling, they constantly
leapt to the surface; and, even so late as the year previous to her
accession, the Radical newspapers were full of suggestions that the
Princess Victoria was in danger from the machinations of her wicked
uncle.

But no echo of these conflicts and forebodings reached the little
Drina--for so she was called in the family circle--as she played with
her dolls, or scampered down the passages, or rode on the donkey her
uncle York had given her along the avenues of Kensington Gardens
The fair-haired, blue-eyed child was idolised by her nurses, and her
mother's ladies, and her sister Feodora; and for a few years there was
danger, in spite of her mother's strictness, of her being spoilt. From
time to time, she would fly into a violent passion, stamp her little
foot, and set everyone at defiance; whatever they might say, she would
not learn her letters--no, she WOULD NOT; afterwards, she was very
sorry, and burst into tears; but her letters remained unlearnt. When
she was five years old, however, a change came, with the appearance