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Bradantia Directory 09
Melbourne was full of prejudices and whims and hatreds, but his charity was boundless, and he always had a good word for an enemy. He excused the career of Henry VIII to the Queen by saying, "You see, those women bothered him so." And when he was superseded by Peel, he combated the Queen's dislike of her new premier, and did his best to put Peel in a favourable light. When Peel made his first appearance at Windsor, shy and awkward, and holding himself like a dancing-master, it was Melbourne who broke the awkward pause by going up to Peel, and saying in an undertone, "For God's sake, go and talk to the Queen!" When I was privileged to work through all Melbourne's letters to the Queen, so carefully preserved and magnificently bound, I was greatly touched by the sweetness and tenderness of them, the gentle ironical flavour, the delicate freedom, and the little presents and remembrances they exchanged up to the end.
When a thing is old, broken, and useless we throw it on the dustheap, but when it is sufficiently old, sufficiently broken, and sufficiently useless we give money for it, put it into a museum, and read papers over it which people come long distances to hear. Byand-by, when the whirligig of time has brought on another revenge, the museum itself becomes a dust-heap, and remains so till after long ages it is re-discovered, and valued as belonging to a neorubbish age--containing, perhaps, traces of a still older paleorubbish civilisation. So when people are old, indigent, and in all respects incapable, we hold them in greater and greater contempt as their poverty and impotence increase, till they reach the pitch when they are actually at the point to die, whereon they become sublime. Then we place every resource our hospitals can command at their disposal, and show no stint in our consideration for them.
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