Excerpt from The Early Court of Queen Victoria NO apology need be made for this book, though perhaps a reason for publishing it may be given. In these pages I have endeavoured to show Queen Victoria in her natural setting during her youth, hoping thereby to present her as a really human person. For twenty-five years at least the tendency among those who write has been so to overwhelm the late Queen with adulation that the ordinary reader turns from the subject in disgust. We are not fit for perfection; we believe that perfection is only an ideal - one which would probably become insufferable were it to de generate into actuality - and when biographers, Whose line, it is true, has been more or less laid down for them, depict Queen Victoria without fault and possess ing almost preternatural wisdom and virtue, then there must be danger of unpopularity for the great Queen. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.