All through his life he accepted men and women for what they were, and although he showed preferences and inclined more to some forms of social entertainment than to others, he never encouraged social cliques or ostracised any man from the circles in which he moved because of opinions or because of his tastes. Like Queen Victoria, he disliked backbiters and scandalmongers, and never accepted rumour as a decisive factor in estimating the character of others, but first required proof.

But the King liked a good story, and could tell one with admirable gusto and without the slightest loss of dignity.

Cut off by the experiences of his position from active political interests, he never lowered himself by lending his countenance to political intrigue. Queen Victoria, standing aloof as she did from the bustling world, absorbed by her profound sense of the semi-divine duties imposed upon her by Providence, rejecting the idea that she was entitled to share her higher responsibilities even with her eldest son, and encouraged to hold this view by the experiences of the House of Hanover, and by the advice of her Ministers who had no wish to widen the area of counsel, undoubtedly isolated the Prince of Wales from public affairs, and threw him, not always uncriticised and unblamed, upon amusements and resources which were held by grave men to be unworthy of his abilities and of his high position. The Turf, the Theatre, and 'Society' in the narrower sense of this term, claimed, many thought, an undue share of his time and attention. Serious men were often in doubt whether the Prince of Wales would ever fill even with conventional decorum that high place in the regard of British subjects all over the face of the world which was occupied by the venerated Queen who had so long sat most regally upon the throne. When the Queen died, if any of those in closer contact with King Edward nourished misgivings, they were dissolved in twenty-four hours.

Not only were the Privy Councillors and citizens of London who were present in the Banqueting Hall of St James's Palace on January 23, 1902, moved to admiration by the noble words-written by the King's own unguided hand-in which he announced his determination, so long as there was breath in his body, to work for the good and

amelioration of his people, but those who stood nearer to him still and were for the succeeding days in close touch with the labours of State as they accumulated hour by hour at Marlborough House, realised immediately that in Edward the Seventh the country had come into possession of a great monarch. So far from his previous life, with its want of concentrated energy, with its so-called frivolities, and with what men always prejudiced and sometimes insincere call its ceremonial inanities, proving an obstacle to kingship, the sheer humanity of it had left him unscathed of soul, and most extraordinarily well equipped for dealing with the gravest problem with which a Sovereign has to deal, that is to say, the eternal problem of making good use of the average man. Few have equalled and certainly no one has ever surpassed King Edward in handling, not dexterously, because the word implies over-consciousness, but with grace past understanding, his fellow man.

Whether it was a Radical politician or a foreign statesman, a man embittered by neglect or one of Fortune's favourites, an honest man or a villain, no one ever left the King's presence without a sense of his own increased importance in the worldly scale of things. It was this power of raising a man in his own estimation, which was the mainspring of the King's influence. His varied intercourse with men of all sorts and conditions, his preference for objective rather than for subjective teaching, as his old tutor said of him in boyhood, and his frank interest in the affairs of others, had taught him the most profound and the oftenest ignored of all platitudes, that the vast majority of men are good, and that no man is wholly evil.

Where the simpler forms of monarchy prevail, and where power is vested in the ruler by organic laws, and is exercised by the brutal 'sic volo sic jubeo' methods of a cruder civilisation, its exercise is a comparatively simple thing. Any one can govern in a state of siege. The Constitution of our Empire, with its delicate checks and balances, held together by tradition and sentiment rather than by immutable laws, demands from its Head qualities which King Edward possessed in the highest degree. Our Constitution withholds power from the Sovereign, but it clothes him with an influence which in the hand of King

Edward was highly potent, and, although exercised in quite a different fashion, was as powerful as that which was exercised throughout her long and glorious reign by Queen Victoria.

It was in the exercise of this influence that the King's love and knowledge of his fellow-men, his genial temper, consummate tact, and complete freedom from rancour or sustained resentment, clothed him with an undisputed authority greater, because far more subtle, than autocratic power would have given him. The pre-eminent men, politicians, religious and social leaders, foreign statesmen, and the most distinguished of his Colonial subjects, who came into contact with him, never left his presence without a desire, in so far as in them lay, to meet his wishes.

Queen Victoria's influence was, during the latter half of her reign, based upon her profound experience and recognised freedom from personal aims, her firm grasp of the constitutional principle which governs a limited monarchy, and her wonderful instinct for gauging the feelings of the serious middle class which was predominant in political England throughout her reign. Her personal contact with her subjects was so rare that it was practically non-existent.

Very few out of the millions of her people, notwithstanding the Jubilees of 1887 and 1897, had ever seen the Queen, and her interviews with her most prominent and most powerful servants were of rare occurrence. Nearly the whole of the State business, with which she was so largely identified, was carried on by correspondence. The advice given to her, when a girl Queen, by the King of the Belgians to have every request for a decision in writing, and to take time to consider, was followed by the Queen to the day of her death. The system had enormous advantages, but it also had its drawbacks. While it undoubtedly led, on many grave occasions, to wise reconsiderations of hasty ministerial action, it often harassed hard-worked Ministers, and sometimes led to unfortunate delays.

King Edward's methods were in direct contrast to these. He was always accessible to his Ministers, and far more than half of the business transacted by the King was transacted orally, by personal interview. He

enjoyed putting questions to his Ministers, and he liked to state his own views, not in a formal document, but face to face with those whom the matter concerned. It is true that he fortified himself for these interviews by frequently instructing his private secretaries to make enquiries, or to remonstrate against public acts or speeches of which he disapproved. But, in the long run, the King himself had his say, and, unlike Queen Victoria, he had his say verbally. It is certain that in saving time and in minimising 'friction' these methods were superior to those of the previous reign.

At the same time, if, in view of the brilliant success achieved by King Edward, a criticism is not out of place, it is, perhaps, pardonable to doubt whether, on such an occasion, if such had arisen, as that of the Trent affair,' when the Prince Consort's direct amendment of a Foreign Office despatch composed a most dangerous difference between Great Britain and the United States, the more methodical plan of obtaining from Ministers reasoned statements on paper of their policy would not have proved to be an extra security for the maintenance of peace, which was always King Edward's chief

concern.

To attempt anything approaching to biography, or even to try to examine critically the reign of King Edward, is impossible here. Even analysis of the influence of the King upon Society and public affairs, if it goes beyond the obvious, is treading upon ground hedged in by the sanctity of recent loss. All that has been attempted in these pages is to place in harmonious contrast the boy Prince and the King as all his people knew him. Lord Rosebery has called King Edward Le Roi Charmeur.' All the civilised world has called him the 'Peacemaker.' His people have grasped his ideal, and Lord Rosebery has indicated his method. A nobler epitaph no Sovereign could desire.

Personal charm is indefinable. It is also a most potent weapon, and a dangerous one in the hands of the unscrupulous. King Edward's charm was invincible. The individual man succumbed to it, and the multitude went down before it. When the King walked into a room every one felt the glow of a personal greeting. When he smiled upon a vast assemblage every one responded unconsciously. On the Derby day, when the King raised his

hat to the immense concourse of his people, his salutation reached the heart of every man and woman. This gift The fact is that, just as their hearts

was priceless to him. went out to him, his heart went out to them, and they knew it. There was not an atom of pose about the King. If he visited the most mighty potentate, if he called upon a humble subject, if he went into a cottage garden, he was and this may seem exaggerated, although it is the simple truth-equally interested and pleased. His joyous sense of life, his broad sympathies, and his complete freedom from ennui, made him genuinely pleased with the lives and homes of others. He was interested. It was no perfunctory sense of politeness, it was no conscious desire to please, which made him note details and suggest improvements or alterations in a strange house or garden. He would say to his host, 'you should cut or plant a tree here,' or he would say to a cottager, 'don't you think that flower-bed would look better so, or that fence would be better in such and such a position,' and he would add, 'I shall see whether you have done so when next I come,' and the effect upon the mind of his hearer was that he really cared. And he did really care. That was the wonderful thing, and it was also the irresistible charm.

This personal magnetism which won the hearts of every one with whom he came into contact and of millions who never saw him, was a national asset worth more to us in our King than the military genius of a Napoleon or the diplomatic gifts of a Metternich, because of its more abiding quality and more permanent results.

King Edward, like his mother before him, has exalted the standard of monarchical government, and shown to all the world the enormous value of the personal factor of the Head of the State under political institutions which leave the people free to make their own laws and to administer them.

The pomp and pageantry of kingship, sometimes decried, were in his hands always used for the State service, and never for personal display. The King lived more simply than many of his wealthy subjects. He liked comfort and even luxury, but he disliked waste. So marked was his repugnance that those about his person often noted it with surprise, but the reason was the sense of his