24 ENGLISH SAGA

sity of the English, a good deal of an overgrown schoolboy—"a
lively, rattling sportsman apparently devoted to racing and rabbit
shooting, gay, boisterous, almost rustic in his manners, without
refinement." Seeing and hearing him among his country friends
and neighbours, it was difficult to believe oneself in the presence
of the haughty aristocrat and scholar who, at his Peel's side,
marshalled the gentlemen of England against the Whigs and
Radicals.

In contrast was Lord Melbourne, the Whig Prime Minister.
Of all who had held supreme office, none was ever so thoroughly
a man of the world. He never dined at home, talked with a rollick-
ing laugh and refused to take anything—even his own loss of office
—too seriously. It was his creed that it was best to try to do no
good and then one could do no harm: his favourite remark,
"Why not leave it alone?" He had been a great rou6 in his day
and was still a favourite with the ladies: the escapades of his wife,
Lady Caroline Lamb, had once set the whole kingdom talking.
But in his old age he had reformed his manners and curbed his
speech—which was of the old English School—to suit the tastes
and needs of a bread and butter miss promoted from the governess
room to the throne.1 Under his easy and accomplished teaching
his little sovereign had developed with almost startling rapidity.
Her marriage to Prince Albert in 1840 transferred her education
into other hands. It was characteristic of aristocratic England
that the Prince's painstaking German ways met at first with little
favour. It was freely noted that the royal couple rose early on
the first morning of their honeymoon: "strange that the bridal
night should be so short," wrote the Clerk of the Council, "I told
Lady Palmerston that this was not the way to provide us with a
Prince of Wales."2

To express criticism of what one did not approve, and in no
unmeasured terms, were the prerogative and habit of an English
aristocrat. The genus held strong views on a great variety of
subjects and never hesitated to voice them. They had their own
standards, many of them eccentric and peculiar, but such as they
were they seldom modified them. They saw no reason why they
should. "They are born wicked and grow up worse," was a
Whig lady's uncompromising reply when asked by her children

lw. . . a.little tit of 18 made all at once into a Queen." Creevey to Miss Ord,
5th Aug., 1837. Qrteoefs Life and Tiiries (ed. J. Gore), 427*
*Greville.