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QUEEN VICTORIA

enough to brave consequences."[1] Apparently, under Palmerston's guidance, she was. While the officials protested and shook in their shoes, he would wave them away with his airy "My responsibility!" and carry the country swiftly along the line of his choice, to a triumphant destination—without an accident. His immense popularity was the result partly of his diplomatic successes, partly of his extraordinary personal affability, but chiefly of the genuine intensity with which he responded to the feelings and supported the interests of his countrymen. The public knew that it had in Lord Palmerston not only a high-mettled master, but also a devoted servant—that he was, in every sense of the word, a public man. When he was Prime Minister, he noticed that iron hurdles had been put up on the grass in the Green Park; he immediately wrote to the Minister responsible, ordering, in the severest language, their instant removal, declaring that they were "an intolerable nuisance," and that the purpose of the grass was "to be walked upon freely and without restraint by the people, old and young, for whose enjoyment the parks are maintained."[2] It was in this spirit that, as Foreign Secretary, he watched over the interests of Englishmen abroad. Noth-

  1. Dalling, I, 346.
  2. Dalling, III, 413–5.