Well do I remember the effect produced on the audience of students, of which I was then one, when Lord Macaulay delivered his Rectorial address in the University of Glasgow, and when, after giving such pictures as he alone could paint, of the character of the four centuries that had closed since the university had been founded—each epoch presenting a scene of bloodshed and misgovernment—he sketched the possible future of the college, and anticipated the time when coming generations would tell how certain contemplated changes had been accomplished during the reign of "the Good Queen Victoria." The phrase was accentuated by an oratorical swing; and when it was given, the tremendous burst of enthusiasm showed that they who listened felt the great historian had chosen the right epithet, and that he intended it in the sense that, as some monarchs are called "Great" and some "Little," so for all time Victoria would be named "the Good Queen." This was said more than forty years ago, before Tennyson had fixed the "Household name," "Albert the Good," for
"That star
Which shone so close beside Thee, that ye made
One light together."
The epoch in our history which is embraced between the years 1837 and 1887, is unparalleled. At no time in the history of the nation, or of the world, has there been such rapid and beneficent progress. We, who are citizens of "the old country," scarcely realize the extent of our dominion. The Roman Empire was one-fourth its size; all the Russias contain an eighth less; it is sixteen times as large as France, and three times as large as the United States. The United Kingdom, with its colonies and dependencies, includes about one-fifth of the entire globe. The rapidity with which population has grown in some parts of our dominion may be measured by Australasia, which in 1837 had 134,059, and in 1885, 3,278,934, or twenty-three times as many more. When we turn from these figures to consider other fields of progress, we are still more amazed. It goes without saying that these last fifty years have seen the growth of railways and steamships from their infancy to their present world-embracing influence. The mileage of railways open in the United Kingdom in 1837 was about 294 miles, but a great proportion was worked by horses. In 1885 the mileage was 19,169, the gross receipts, £69,555,774; they carried about 1,275,000,000 passengers, and employed 367,793 men. Not a steamer had crossed the Atlantic by steam alone when the queen came to the throne, and her accession was in the year previous to that during which Wheatstone in this country, and Morse in America, introduced electric telegraphy. We, who enjoy express trains, six-penny telegrams, half-penny post-cards, and the parcel post, can scarcely realize that we are so near the time when mail-coaches and sailing-packets were almost the only means of conveyance, and when postage was a serious burden. The greatness of the changes in social life may be realized when we remember that, so recently as 1844, duelling was banished from the code of honor; that crime has diminished seventy-one per cent. since 1837; and that while fifty years ago Government did nothing for education, there are now 30,000 public schools under the Privy Council. These facts are suggestive of the extent of the advance. Or if, without touching on the marvellous victories of science, we try to form an estimate of religious progress, and take the tables for Protestant missions as giving a fair indication of the zeal and self-sacrifice of the churches, we find that while British contributions in 1837 amounted to £316,610, in 1885 they reached £1,222,261.
It may be said with truth that the progress thus indicated must have gone on, no matter who sat on the throne; but it would be unjust not to recognize the close influence which the Crown has directly and indirectly exercised on its advance. There has been no movement tending to the development of the arts and the industries of the country which has not enlisted the active sympathy of the royal family. From the first the Prince Consort recognized the important part which the sovereign could fulfil in reference to the peaceful victories of science and art. Beginning with agriculture—the improvement of stock and the better housing of agricultural laborers, we trace the effect of his constant toil in the series of industrial triumphs, of which the great exhibition of 1851 was the magnificent precursor; and, in recent years, the same kind of objects have always enlisted the best energies of the queen and her children.
Victoria greeted as Queen.
The contrast is great and touching between the scene in Westminster Abbey, when, amid the pomp of a gorgeous ceremonial and the acclamation of her subjects, the fair girl-queen received the crown of Britain, and that other scene, when, after fifty years of a government that has been unblemished, she once more kneels in the same spot—a widow surrounded by her children and her children's children, bearing the burden of many sad as well as blessed memories, and encompassed with the thanksgivings of the three hundred millions of her subjects. We can imagine how oppressive, for one so loving, must then be the vision of the past, as she recalls, one after another, the once familiar and dear faces which greeted her coronation, those relatives, great ministers of state, and warriors of whom so few survive; and when all her happy married years and the years of parting and desolation appear in vivid retrospect. But if ever monarch had cause to bless God for His tender mercies, it must be she who can combine with the memory of her own life's hopes and trials the consciousness that, in the great work given her as a sovereign, she has been enabled to fulfil the beautiful desire of her innocent childhood, when, on her first being informed of her royal destiny, she indulged in no vain dream of power, but uttered the simple longing "to be good." That goodness has been her real greatness.