Public Opinion 1.1.2.3

But the most interesting kind of portraiture is that which arises spontaneously in people's minds. When Victoria came to the throne, says Mr. Strachey, [Footnote: Lytton Strachey, Queen Victoria, p. 72.] "among the outside public there was a great wave of enthusiasm. Sentiment and romance were coming into fashion; and the spectacle of the little girl-queen, innocent, modest, with fair hair and pink cheeks, driving through her capital, filled the hearts of the beholders with raptures of affectionate loyalty. What, above all, struck everybody with over-whelming force was the contrast between Queen Victoria and her uncles. The nasty old men, de-bauched and selfish, pigheaded and ridiculous, with their perpetual burden of debts, confu-sions, and disreputabilities—they had vanished like the snows of winter and here at last, crowned and radiant, was the spring."

Quelle

Public Opinion, Walter Lippmann, 1922.