The number of the Musical Times to-day published, is for many reasons a remarkable one. It contains a brief record of the QUEEN in her quality as a musician - as a disciple of that art "which was always a source of great enjoyment to her, whether as a listener or as a performer, throughout her long, eventful, and beautiful life." Her Majesty, as it now is suggested, inherited her musical gifts from her mother, the DUCHESS of KENT. Our own THOMAS MOORE has preserved the fact for us that the PRINCESS VICTORIA was a singer at the age of eleven. For in his diary under date October 23, 1830, the sweetest of all Irish singers set it down that he was a guest at a country house where the DUCHESS of KENT and her daughter, the future QUEEN of ENGLAND, were staying , and thus the jotting ran: - "Music in the evening. The DUCHESS sang a duet or two with the PRINCESS VICTORIA, and several pretty German songs by herself . . . her manner of singing just what a lady's ought to be. No attempts at bravura or graces, but all simplicity and expression." And that there was no better judge than MOORE the whole musical world will readily confess.
The Irish Times, February 1st, 1901.