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ROYAL LETTERS.—VICTORIA

IT is not often that kings and queens are permitted—they are so ill-used by envy—to have the benefit of their own literary works. To be sure, they have time out of mind, been great deceivers; their good things always having been said for them; put into their mouths, as you would put a lump of sugar between the beak of a parrot. When George the Third, the royal brain puzzled by the mystery of an apple-dumpling, asked how the apples got into the paste, seeing that there seemed, no seam,—this profound reflection was attributed to Doctor Wolcott, to the great wrong of George Guelph. When Louis the Eighteenth on the blessed restoration, informed France that there was nothing changed in the country by his return, there was only one Frenchman the more; he was cruelly robbed of the felicity of the idea by the friends of Tallyrand—(has the Fox friends?) who plucked the royal bird of the feather to stick it in the hat of Prince Perigord Renard! Napoleon the Great has hitherto been undetected in his robberies; but we have no doubt that his famous speech about thirty centuries looking down from the Pyramids upon French soldiers was written for him by one of the savans—the much despised men—who riding about upon asses were quizzed as a sort of centaur, the unlearned not knowing where the wise man ended and the donkey began. The famous step from the sublime to the ridiculous remains as originally taken by Napoleon, the Uncle; but there can be no doubt of it, that the faux pas was the step of, perhaps, Madame De Stael. This is too bad; but as it is, Louis Napoleon has not been so lucky. L’empire, c’est la paix! This—it has long been known to the private friends of that gentleman—is the property of John Bright. And the very last fine saying of Napoleon the Nephew has been traced as far back as—as Tacitus.

“When your Lordship acts Tiberius, Tom Fudge's place is Tacitus,”

sings Tom Moore. In his speech to the Chambers, Louis Napoleon said of St. Arnaud, withered as he was and dying, that “he forced death to wait for victory.” This, by the envious, is given to one Mocquard, the private secretary to the Emperor and translator of Tacitus, from whom he took the phrase !—In this way do republican levellers pull down the high ones!

How lucky, then, are we in Queen Victoria, whose Nightingale letter is in no way an embroidered letter; not a letter stiff with gold thread and glittering with royal gems, but a purely woman's letter—as simple as the simplest missive winged from country hall. The fair lady of the mansion desires to know about a few of her humble neighbours now absent. She hears of her finer acquaintance; but she desires to know how fare Tom and Dick and Harry?

“Would you tell Mrs. Herbert that I begged she would let me see frequently the accounts she receives from Miss Nightingale or Mrs. Bracebridge, as I hear no details of the wounded, tho' I see so many from officers, &c, about the battle-field, and naturally the former must interest me more than any one."

The Lady of the Hall—it is called Daisy Hall—desires that her poor friends—they are honest, worthy tenants every one of them—may know that she still thinks of them; still hopes to see them? Her husband, too, the Squire of Daisy Hall, has kind and gentle memories of them.

“Let Mrs. Herbert also know that I wish Miss Nightingale and the ladies would tell these poor noble wounded and sick men that NO ONE takes a warmer interest, or feels more for their sufferings, or admires their courage and heroism MORE than the Queen. Day and night she thinks of her beloved troops. So does the Prince.

“Beg Mrs. Herbert to communicate these my words to those ladies, as I know that our sympathy is much valued by these noble fellows. “(Signed) ‘Victoria.’”

There is no regal flourish in this. It is downright simplicity of heart and earnest womanly tenderness. We know of no such royal letter in any of the Ellis collection. Grim and hard are Mary's, as though writ in ashes with the stick of a friar; hard and incisive Elizabeth's, traced with the sword; the sentences struck short, as with the headman's axe. (Shade of Essex,—is it not so?) But in Victoria's letter it is all womanhood: there is nothing of the state of royalty in it; nought of the ermine but its softness and its purity. W. M. T. [William Makepeace Thackeray]