From her pure fame!”
You are in London on the twenty-second day of June in the year 1897, and again it is in festal array. The whole nation is making holiday to rejoice in the completion of sixty years of peace and prosperity under the beneficent sway of a dearly-loved queen. Ten years ago great public thanksgivings signalized her jubilee; now that she has occupied the throne longer than any of her predecessors, and has reigned for more years than any other monarch known to history, the nation’s delight and gratitude know no bounds.
You are standing in a favoured position gazing on the front of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Afar off you hear the dull roar of cheering. The queen is making her progress through the capital of her vast Empire. She rides in state to-day amidst evidences of almost filial loyalty, and her eyes are wet with tears of love and gratitude as she perceives how dear she is to the hearts of her people. On the steps of the cathedral are the City Fathers, the Colonial Premiers, and a white-robed throng of bishops, priests, and choristers, the aged Archbishop of Canterbury at their head. The noise of cheering grows louder and louder, a troop of Household Cavalry clatters by, and you hear the loud cry, “The Queen! The Queen!” Every head is bared as the state carriage with its eight horses appears; the huzzas that go up from thousands of throats almost deafen you.
And now the carriage halts, and the old archbishop offers simple and fervent thanks to Almighty God for the signal mercies vouchsafed through such long years to Victoria and her people. Then, as a climax, the whole concourse bursts into the strains of “God save the Queen.” Never has the National Anthem been so heartily sung, never before has it been so little of a demonstration and so much of a prayer. There is no lip-service here: Victoria’s throne is in the hearts of her people; she is theirs, and they are hers.
Look at this little, old lady, whom all men, from duke to crossing-sweeper, are to-day hailing as their pride and joy. Look at her, and strive to realize the splendour of the great office which she has filled so long and so worthily. She is the sovereign lady of a dominion so wide in extent and so rich in resources that nothing like it has ever been seen before in the history of the world. Glance at the colonial procession which is even now wending its way through the streets, and you will marvel at the world-wide character of her sway. Here you see men of British race, dwellers in the most distant parts of the earth, all come from afar to grace their queen’s pageant, and all bearing themselves proudly in the eyes of their kinsfolk “at home.” Here, too, you see numerous foreign subjects of the queen, men of almost every variety of colour, creed, and language, equally proud to do her honour, equally ready to praise her beneficent sway.
It is almost impossible for the aged monarch on this red-letter day of her life not to reflect on the wonderful changes which have transformed the world since that June morning sixty years ago when they waked her out of sleep and told her that she was queen. The vast Empire, for example, which has been so vividly brought before the minds of the British people to-day is very largely the creation of her reign. In extent it has nearly doubled itself since she came to the throne, and now covers almost one-fifth of the globe. In 1837 the colonial population was under 4,000,000. Now, excluding India, more than 18,000,000 of colonists are subject to her. India under her sway has doubled its native population, and to-day one-fifth of all the people on earth acknowledge her as their sovereign.
The railways which have brought tens of thousands of visitors rapidly and cheaply to town were only in their infancy when she rode through London to her coronation, the steamships which have carried her brave colonials across countless leagues of sea were unknown. The electric telegraph, which is even now flashing the news of her pageant through thousands of miles of wire and cable to every part of the civilized world, was then but a toy. The penny post, which to-night will convey tens of thousands of letters to every town in the land and to most parts of her wide Empire, did not exist. There were no omnibuses, no tramcars, no district railways, no “twopenny tubes,” no motor cars. To-night London will blaze with electric lights. What a contrast to the flickering oil lamps of her childhood!
And what a vast improvement has taken place in the condition of her people! She reflects that there is still plenty of poverty and misery in her land, but not a tithe of that which existed when she came to the throne. Wages are far better, food is far cheaper, housing has greatly improved, and men are kings to what they were. The barbarous old criminal laws have been abolished; work-people are no longer the helots of their masters; education is universal, and as free as air and sunlight; and every householder has a voice in the government of his country. She casts her mind back over sixty years, and rejoices that all things have worked together for this great good, and that the result is a proud, self-respecting, orderly, and deeply-patriotic people.
Truly in retrospect her reign appears one long, triumphal march; yet there have been reverses, checks, and disasters in plenty, though shame never. War has been waged in almost every quarter of the globe, and plentiful laurels have been won. Her thoughts revert for a moment to the great struggle in the Crimea, which took place forty-three years ago, and to the splendid British courage and endurance there displayed. “Alma,” “Balaclava,” “Inkerman,” “Sevastopol”—what heroic memories these names recall to her! And then she remembers the terrible period of anxiety which followed, when the Sepoys rose, and India almost fell from our grasp. “Delhi,” “Lucknow,” “Cawnpore”—what anguish and heroism these names import! As for the rest of her wars, she rejoices to know that they have been, for the most part, punitive expeditions against savage neighbours and revolting tribesmen. How fervently she prays that peace at home and abroad may ever be the lot of her people!
The great day draws to a brilliant close, and from end to end of the Empire runs her gracious message of gratitude:—