What is within pours forth in an immediate, spontaneous rush.

Her utterly unliterary style has at least the merit of being a vehicle exactly suited to her thoughts and feelings; and even the platitude of her phraseology carries with it a curiously personal flavour.

Undoubtedly it was through her writings that she touched the heart of the public.

Not only in her "Highland Journals" where the mild chronicle of her private proceedings was laid bare without a trace either of affectation or of embarrassment, but also in those remarkable messages to the nation which, from time to time, she published in the newspapers, her people found her very close to them indeed.

They felt instinctively Victoria's irresistible sincerity, and they responded.