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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 26, 1901)
yroL.xvi., no. iv ESTABLISHED IN 18SG PRICK FIVK CENTS Wy LINCOLN. NEBR.. SATURDAY. JANUARY 2G. 1001. THE COURIER, Biliimiy the postoftice at Lincoln as SECOND CLASS MATTER. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY Bl COURIER PRINTING HMD PUBLISHING GO Office 1132 N Btreet, Up Stairs. Telephone 384. SARAH B. HARRIS. Editor Stifcscrinfinn R. . r 'er annum $1 50 IjBix months 1 00 Fifty oer cent discount for cash cavmtnts. Single copies 05 c The Cockier will not bo responsible for vol .mntary communications unless accompanied by return postage. v Communications, to receive attention, must be signed by the full name of the writer, not merely as a guarantee of good faith, but for .publication if advisable. foo 1 9 OBSERVATIONS. &.00''3 Queen Victoria. The end of the longest and most notable of all English reigns has tarrived. Not alone the English peo ,ple, but men and women of all nations are recognizing and paying tribute to the spotless record of self control exhibited by the Queen of 'Great Britain and Ireland and Em- ipresspf India. Queen Victoria was not a brilliant woman, n sue nau oeen, she might not have so carefully studied every duty and every bit of advice she gave her ministers. She did not depend upon inspiration. She kept the extent of her country in mind. She lias not been a jingo. She has not been a quaker. But her in- g. Hence in softening war like messages lias averted several wars. It isdiili- cult for an American to appreciate just the feeling the English have for the Queen, a feeling which with royal tact, she has never strained. Her iu- lluence on English policy and history for the last sixty years has not been extensively discussed, but from the letters and biographies of her prime ministers, it is evident that it has been much weightier than her non- exercise of the veto power indicates. She possessed that rare, undesignated, unreverenced quality of good judg ment, a power to see a complex sub ject, with ramifying and complex ad juncts and see it whole. She could sec it thus and present ic with sim plicity to her ministers. This is an extraordinary gift. Only a very few human beings possess it. There are geniuses scattered about much more thickly than these eminently sane, always long-lived people, who are capable of guiding a family, a city, or a nation, without making costly mis takes. It is a fortunate coincidence that its possessor should be Lorn a queen. The English government has made mistakes in Victoria's reign, and she has made them too. But in all English history where is there an other king or queen who had such a prolonged and such infinite opportu nity to make, mistakes, who made so few? Queen Victoria was great in emergencies, in trying times when her ministers were worried, her royal courage was steady and her mind and judgment were illumined by that steady light which is the distinguish ing characteristic of the Victorian administration. About 1876 having accomplished much more notable feats, she pub lished a book, which is very poorly composed and tilled with trivialities. She wrote as the Queen, of the people, not as the wise woman, but as the people looked upon her. She took ad vantage of their interest in her rides and walks and guests and the com monplace incidents of even a queen's days to compile a book of trivallties. She had not the literary sense, no picturesquencss of phrasing, no power of treatment which can transform uninteresting men, women and doings into something worth while reading about. But as the head of a nation, as the tirst executive officer of an in credibly spacious and populous nation, the Queen is without a rival in his tory. Our amateur, temporary mod ern presidents, though they have larger constitutional powers are not more actually influential, and the brevity of their reigns, each president beginning tentatively and in dread of the vote which will curtail his ad ministration to four years or extend it to eight, inevitably weakens them. Queen Elizabeth, is the only other English sovereign who can be com pared with Queen Victoria. Eliza beth was a more brilliant, more virile genius. Margaret Deland, in speak ing of Elizabeth, says "It was a stren uous time, and a lighter or feebler nature must either have been whirled like a ship on the evil current, or gone under and be forgotten. Instead the clear-headed girl grew into a pow erful woman, cruel, arrogant, con ceited: but witli a man's intellect and impersonal farsightedness, and with a man's magnificent physical courage; with also a sort of elemental integ rity and sense of fairness in large matters, that is really a masculine quality and is generally the ethical accompaniment of a sense of humour." "She was ineradicably masculine, but she tried hard and laboriously to be feminine and silly." When she died she had 3.000 magnificent dresses, "yet she was never really successful with her wardrobe, as a more femi nine woman might have been. Her dresses were never beautiful, only ludicrously and most inappropriately magnificent, laden with jewels, weighted down with cloth of gold, stiff with silver embroidery, and so heavy that even her big. powerful frame must (without support of van ity) have felt the fatigue of carrying them about.' "While making love to Lord Leicester," she could fling love making aside as she might drop her mantle from her shoulders, and enter her Council Chamber witit her man's stride and her loud voice and her big oaths, to call her Commons as she did once, a parcel of ignorant beasts!' Or to curse her frightened ministers, huddling together like frightened b!eating sheep. Yet straight from such a scene, back she would go to her sighing and ogling and iovemak ing." In her old age Elizabeth was miserably tormented by remorse. She saw things at night and hated to go to bed. After staying out of her couch for ten days she replied to Cecil's entreaties' that if he were in the habit of seeing sucli things in his bed, as she saw in hers, he would not persuade her to go there. Queen Victoria's passing is serene and unmenaced by wronged ghosts. The Queen was a mother and has been disciplined by love and suffering into a much more exalted being than that, other queen whose reign Shakspere, Raleigh and Bacon have helped to make immortal. In Elizabeth's time the monarchy was an undebatabic institution. The monarch could still order heads off right and left, and continue to reign. That there lias been no serious discussion of abolish ing royalty in the reign of Victoria, is an overwhelming tribute to her ability and comprehension of the spirit of the times. What if a man with the temperament, obstinacy, and pig-headedness of Charles the I. had attempted to reign over the English people for the last sixty years? He would not now be dead and mourned for by the heartfelt, bitter grief of United England. The war in Africa has undoubtedly hastened the death of the Queen. She was surprised at Kruger's ultimatum and lias regretted the war that was forced upon England more than any o.ie of her subjects. She was too old to bear the hourly anxiety and the alternating strain of defeat with slaughter and victory unaccompanied by glory. King Edward VH. One of the most admirable qualities of the new king is his reverence and affection for his mother. A smaller mind might have been betrayed into an expression of impatience for being so long kept out of his inheritance. But the Prince of Wales has not even desired that the Queen should abdi cate in Ills favor. He has been fully cognizant of the perfect understand ing and great affection existing be tween the people of Great Britain and the Queen. And her Majesty has been strengthened to her long task by the loyalty, love and generosity of the heir to the throne. Not a man in the empire has rendered the Queen luore steady, unselfish service than Albert Edward now King of England. Now that his mother is dead and he lifts up the burden the gentle old lady carried so long, tUerc is no one who knows him or who has cared to study his treatment of his mother, that can doubt the genuineness of his grief. Emperor William was so anxious to rule and make speeches that he al most snatched the government from his father the Emperor Frederick. But the Prince of Wales in his mast, unguarded moment never betrayed a desire to take bis mother's place or to hurry her. King Edward has inherited from his mother some of her most distin guishing traits such as discretion, modesty, love and respect for peace. In the days of his apparent heirship he has not betrayed his political pref erences, cither for men or partio. Nobody can say whether the King Is liberal or conservative, so strictly has he interpreted and obeyed the spirit of the English constitution. He is not a meddler, but has kept with con tentment his own place. He has never been betrayed into a diatribe on free speech and the absolute neces sity of its practice by the heir to the throne. He has never "posed" (and for this the world can not be too grateful, compare William) as a mar tyr, as an example, as a great warrior, as & statesman He has never adver tised himself. In all public functions he has performed the duty of the Prince of Wales satisfactorily to the English people. Some times a man is as distinguished for what he doc not do a3 for what lie doc. The Prince of Wales has succeeded in the midst of temptations that might have appealed to a weaker man, in being the most loyal subject of her Majesty the Queen and in holding his tongue. The latter is an attainment of rarest value. It was an element of strength in General Grant and the King of England has proved it his. Most of us chatter away our secrete, our inheritance, and embarrass our lriends our employers and all our fut ure opportunities. Like Prince Harry for very ennui of courts and courtiers the prince ha-4 been gayer, at times, and in the capac ity of a private citizen, than the sobpr-minded can approve. But for tlrose things which he has not done and for the kind of a man which he is not, England and the world can be profoundly grateful. How English men would tremble and iD what danger the throne would be now, if King Edward possessed the unquiet love of notoriety and the exercise of power for its own sake which dis tinguishes his nephew, the Emperor of Germany, whose own mother prayed that he be not informed of her fatal illness knowing that he would pay no attention to her prayer to keep the news private. The Candidates and the Legislature. Newspapers and groups of politic ians talk about the members of the legislature as though they were s many checkers or chessmen to be
