With her departure exhaustion seems to have come upon the world of letters for a time, and to the classic glories of the nineteenth century there has succeeded an usurpation of journalists without the splendour of genius or even the distinction of scholarship.
And although we may perhaps recognise in Lord Beaconsfield’s inclusive use of the
phrase to her of “we authors, Madam” something of the flattery of the courtier, yet assuredly in all her public addresses to her people there is displayed a fine and biblical simplicity, and a directness of appeal indicative of a noble mind and a great heart.
The most penetrating criticism will fail to discover a fault either of taste or diction or intent in any of these utterances. They combine the dignity appropriate to the words of the greatest Sovereign of the World, with the intimate friendliness that proceeds from the wellsprings of a sweet woman’s heart.
Worthily then did she reign over the most splendid times of our history.
That she should from the day she ascended the throne to the day of her death forward and abet all the enlargements of the spirit of mercy and pity towards the suffering, whether among man or animals, was inevitable in a nature so benevolent. And it may very well be that in far distant times the rise of humaneness to man and beast
will be regarded as one of the noblest characteristics of her reign.
Her position above controversies precluded her from participating in them, and made it difficult if not impossible for her publicly to espouse the cause of the miserable creatures subjected to nameless sufferings in the laboratories of the scientific. But her sympathy with those who strove and still strive to end those sufferings could not always be concealed, and on a memorable occasion she expressed her concurrence in the efforts of those who desired to see the laws sanctioning such suffering totally abolished and repealed.
Very fitting therefore it is that among those who earnestly condemned vivisection we should include the august name and fame of Queen Victoria.