After the marriage of Prince Leopold the Queen visited the East End to open Epping Forest, which had been saved from further enclosure by the efforts of the Corporation of London. On the 4th of December her Majesty also visited in State the Royal Courts of Justice.
MENTONE.
(From a Photograph by Frith and Co., Reigate.)
The death-roll of the year was a heavy one. On the 19th of April the death of Charles Darwin robbed not only England but Europe of a singularly original, painstaking, and conscientious scientific investigator. No man of his stamp has so profoundly affected the thought of the Victorian age or surveyed so wide a field of nature, in such a fair, patient, and humble spirit. His keenness of observation was only equalled by his wonderful fertility of resource. The caution with which he felt his way to just inductions, the unerring instinct with which his eye detected, amidst the maze of bewildering phenomena, the true path that led him to the secrets he sought to discover, and the masculine sagacity with which he reconciled, under broad generalisations, facts seemingly irreconcilable, confer immortality on the great work of his life. That work was his demonstration of the extraordinary effect produced on every living thing by the pressure of the conditions under which it lives—conditions which help or hinder its existence or its reproduction. The organisms which are so formed that they most easily meet the strain of these conditions survive, and their offspring bend to the same destiny. In other words, those organisms that inherit peculiarities of form and structure and stamina that best fit them to survive in the struggle for life, live. Those that do not inherit these advantages die. Such was the Darwinian hypothesis of Evolution, or the doctrine of Survival of the Fittest, and it gave to Science an impetus not less revolutionary and far-reaching than that which it received from the Baconian system.
A trusted and valued friend and servant of the Queen passed away on the 3rd of December, when Dr. Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury, died after a long and painful illness. Though he was not a man of brilliant parts, or commanding intellect, he was the only Primate who, since the House of Brunswick ruled England, had left a distinct mark on the Anglican Church. He was in truth the only Primate, since the days of Tillotson, who had a definite policy, and a will strong enough to carry it out. Tait’s policy was to make the Church of England popular with the governing class of his day—that is to say, with the intelligent and respectable bourgeoisie. So long as they supported the Church it could, in his opinion, defy disestablishment; and it is but fair to say that he secured for it their support. He never alarmed the average Englishman by intellectuality, or irritated the middle classes by any obtrusive display of culture. He was careful not to offend them by indecorous versatility. They were never frightened by flashing wit, or bewildered by scholastic sophistry. He was faithful and zealous in the discharge of his pastoral duties, generous and tolerant to opponents, eager for what he called “comprehension,” slow in the pursuit of heresy. In every relation of life he was the incarnation of common sense and propriety. The Queen placed such unbounded confidence in his judgment that it was generally supposed Dr. Tait virtually nominated his successor. At all events, it was well known that Dr. Benson, Bishop of Truro, who succeeded to the Primacy, was the candidate specially favoured by the Sovereign, and that he was, of all the younger prelates, the one whom Dr. Tait most desired to see reigning in his stead.
The death of Garibaldi on June 2, and of M. Gambetta on December 31, profoundly moved the English people. Garibaldi’s life of heroic adventure, unselfish patriotism, and disinterested devotion to the cause of liberty, had endeared him to the masses. M. Gambetta’s amazing energy in endeavouring to lift France out of the mire of defeat in 1870 had won for him the admiration of the world. His tempestuous eloquence gave him an almost magical power over the French democracy, a power which he wielded for no sordid personal aims. If latterly his policy seemed to revive the restless aggressive spirit of his countrymen, it was admitted that he sought nothing save the glory of France. And yet for Europe it may be conceded that the death of Gambetta was not a mishap. Had he lived it would have been hard to have avoided a collision between France and England in Egypt. He encouraged those who, in Paris and St. Petersburg, had for many years been intriguing for a Russo-French alliance against Germany.[182] His death and that of Garibaldi were followed by Signor Mancini’s disclosure to the Italian Senate, of the adhesion of Italy to the Austro-German Alliance, and the formation of the Triple League of Peace.[183]
