But nothing of the kind happened. The Queen, by her wit and her courage, had circumvented all the royal old sticklers for precedence--who put etiquette before nature. The Queen's mother, and her uncle and aunt, the King and Queen of Belgium, were present,--so it was quite a family-party. The good Uncle Leopold was observed to smile benignly on both Victoria and Albert, as though well pleased with his work. The Queen was most magnificently attired with all her glories on, in the shape of diamonds and orders, and looked very proud and happy,--and yet there was a dreamy, half-troubled expression in her eyes at times, which was not usual, but which her mother understood.
On this day, Prince Albert's _status_ was fixed. He had taken a ride with his wife, in the State-carriage, with the twelve cream-colored, long-tailed State horses, and the gorgeous footmen, and he had sat higher, and nearer the throne than any other man in the House of Lords, Prince or Peer. The next thing the Queen did for him was to make him a member of the Privy Council. But a little later, he had a higher promotion than that; for, on the 21st of November, the Princess Royal was born in Buckingham Palace, in the early afternoon.
During the morning the Duchess of Kent had been sent for--and came hurrying over. They also sent for the Duke of Sussex, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Melbourne, Lord Palmerston, Lord Errol, Lord Albemarle--Lord John Russell, and other Privy Councillors, whose constitutional duty it is to be present at the birth of an heir to the throne of England,--and they came bustling in, as old ladies come together on a like occasion in country places in New England. It is probable they all looked for a boy. The girl was an extraordinary baby, however, for when she was barely two days old, her papa wrote to her grandpapa at Coburg, "The little one is very well and very merry." The Prince welcomed her in a fatherly way, though, as he confesses, sorry that she was the same sort of a human creature as her mother,--that is, a daughter instead of a son. He wrote to his father very frankly, "I should certainly have liked it better if she had been a son, as would Victoria also," and so, strangely enough, would the English people--unfortunate as they had often been with their Kings, and fortunate as they had always been with their Queens. The great officers of the Church and State went away probably saying, "Only a girl!" Dear "little Pussie," as she was often called, wouldn't have been so "merry" if she had known how it was. She was looked upon as a temporary stop-gap- -something to keep out Cumberland, and naturally she did not have so many silver cups and gold spoons as she would have had if she had been a boy-- nor so many guns, poor thing! When the firing ceased at the feminine limit, people all over the city said, "Only a girl!"