The Burial of

the Queen.

LONDON, March 1, 1901. When the REVIEW OF REVIEWS went to press last month, London was thrilling with a great emotion, which culminated in the three days' funeral of Queen Victoria. It is late to refer to this, the most mournful and yet the most stately of all pageants which brought to a dramatic close the Victorian Era. The attention of the whole world was concentrated for a time upon the strangely varied procession of the remains of the dead Queen from her island home at Osborne across the Solent to Portsmouth, from Portsmouth

to London, through the streets of the great metropolis, from thence to St. George's Chapel at Windsor, and on to the last stage ending in the burial at Frogmore. The whole ceremony, although somewhat too militarya criticism which also applied to the celebration of her great Jubileewas carried out with great dignity and decorum, in welcome contrast to the scenes which accompanied the funeral of the Duke of Wellington, the last great public function of the kind. The public mourning, which found its most conspicuous expression in the funeral rites at the seat of the Empire, was universal throughout all the dominions of the Queen, with the exception of Ireland. Even the South African Dutch, who were writhing under the harrow of imperial conquest, did not refuse to shed a tributary tear over the bier of the great Queen, who had died of the war which was desolating their homesteads.

The Triumph of

the Kaiser.

Cape Register.]

day after the interment at Frogmore. His presence at the deathbed and the tomb of his grandmother impressed the public imagination as much as his ready helpfulness, his evident emotion, and his tender sympathy appealed to the members of the Royal household, from the heart of which he governed the German Empire for a fortnight. This sentiment found expression in the continuous roar of cheering which greeted his progress through Western London. But, as usual, the more unthinking and impulsive element in our community overdid the whole thing, and wrote and spoke as if

[Feb. 1.

The last scene in the moving drama of the death and burial of Queen Victoria was the enthusiastic reception accorded by the London populace to the Kaiser of Germany as he drove from Paddington Station to Marlborough House the.

Lord Roberts's Black Eagle.

the filial devotion of the grandson to his grandmother had, as a necessary sequel, the conclusion of a firm fighting alliance between England and Germany. There is not even a shadow of foundation for this delusion, but it would seem from

the pictorial press of Cape Colony that this purely domestic visit has been acclaimed as if the Kaiser had declared himself in cooperative alliance with Great Britain for the subjugation of the Boer Republics.

Field

The conduct of the Kaiser was throughout in strict accordance with the rôle which he had marked out for himself, with perhaps one exception. The King had bestowed upon him a Marshal's bâton, but that was no reason why he should have decorated his brother Field-Marshal, Lord Roberts, with the Order of the Black Eagle, one of the highest orders in his gift, and one which it has hitherto been the habit to confine to those who have rendered distinguished service to Germany. Whatever may be the merits of Lord Roberts, it can hardly be contended that in the whole course of his illustrious career he has ever done anything which could be described as service rendered either to Germany or

Prussia. This conspicuous mark of Imperial favour has been bitterly resented in Germany by all classes of the community. In a country where freedom of the Press does not exist so far as criticism of the Emperor is concerned, it was impossible for popular discontent to find adequate expression in the journals; but there have been sufficient indications to show that the German nation regarded the Kaiser's decoration of Lord Roberts in exactly the same light as that in which England regarded Prince Lobanoff's acceptance of a decoration from Abdul the Damned when his hands were still reeking with the blood of massacred Armenians.

war in the hands of the Allies since the taking of Peking, their execution affords no proof that the Empress is willing to sacrifice Prince Tuan and his colleagues. It is notable that the same day on which the first two victims were executed, the Ministers of the Powers at Peking negatived a proposal pressed by a strong minority of their number to insist upon similar executions taking place in every village and town which had been the centre of the Boxer insurrection. It is to be hoped that this is a sign that the thirst of Christendom for vengeance is at last being assuaged. Considerable alarm was occasioned last month by the news that Count von Waldersee was preparing for an expedition to Singanfu. Neither the United States nor Great Britain had agreed to any such expedition, and its announcement appears to have been a piece of bluff and nothing else. The railway of Shan-hai-wan has been restored to British hands, and Russia is negotiating with China on the subject of Manchuria on terms which, while leaving the civil government of the province under the Chinese, effectually secures to Russia control of the railway and exclusive right to concessions in these northern places of China. Russia, it must be remembered, has a separate war of her own with China, and naturally negotiates peace direct without reference to the other Powers, with whom she is in alliance for other purposes.

had been read by the Monarch whose sentiments it is supposed to express. The famous old State coach with its gorgeously caparisoned team of horses was brought out for the occasion, and London was afforded a slight foretaste of the splendours of the coming coronation. It is but seldom that Royalty enters the lists against the Lord Mayor's Show, but when it does, the civic pageant is easily outdone by royal state. Inside the Houses of Parliament the King and the Queen sat side by side on thrones. The King read a King's speech of unusual length from a lectern, while his Ministers and councillors, with the cap of maintenance, the sword of State, and the other symbols of royalty, were grouped around with strict regard to precedent. The scene was an imposing one, and the spectacle was only marred by the fact that the chamber was much too small. Five hundred peers have a titular right to seats in the Upper House, but on this occasion the gilded chamber was submerged by a flood of peeresses, whose presence left next to no room for the 'faithful Commons" when they were summoned by Black Rod to hear the King's speech. The rush of the Commons was little short of a public scandal, which, however, will have one good result in future. It is hinted that the King will be not indisposed to allow Parliament to be opened in Westminster Hall, the great spacious chamber which has so long stood empty, but which in its time has witnessed many of the greatest, the most glorious, and the most tragic scenes in English history.

The Empress Frederick.

66

Parliament had hardly got into full swing, and the debate on the Address was not concluded, when the King, after receiving and replying to a few of the innumerable addresses which had been presented to the Crown in the last three weeks, departed for Germany to visit his sister the Empress Frederick, whose recovery is despaired of. The Empress was always the King's favourite sister, and as the tie between them was much more warmly affectionate than that which existed between the King and his mother, it is probable that his visit to the sick-bed at Cronberg may have occasioned him even more sorrow than his attendance at the death-bed at Osborne. Nothing could be more natural and befitting than that the King should pay a last farewell visit to his sister; but it is significant evidence of the intensity of German feeling on the subject that it was necessary to use German papers to lecture the German people as to the impro