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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
