...

"The loss of my dear, great friend . . . has completely overwhelmed me. His devotion and kindness to me, his wise counsels, his great gentleness combined with firmness, his one thought for the honor and glory of the country, and his unswerving loyalty to the throne, make the death of my dear Lord Beaconsfield a national calamity. My grief is great and lasting."

The Queen's words, "his one thought for the honor and glory of the country," are illustrative of what Her Majesty most values in her counsellors; they also indicate her conception of Royalty as a means of representing the nation, and the fusion of party differences. With the wider and wider extension of the suffrage, the House of Commons stands in danger, by its very representative character, of representing only the people who vote for it, and these are only a handful in the great world of the British Empire. The Queen has 378,000,000 subjects; of these only about six millions vote for the Members of the House of Commons. There is danger of the six millions acting with something less than justice to the unrepresented 372,000,000. The Queen constantly watches against this danger, and her well-trained eye quickly detects those among the statesmen of both parties who are able to grasp the larger conception of the duties of government, who are not prepared to destroy the Empire to buy a party majority, or who steadily decline to buy, for example, thirty seats in Lancashire, by the sacrifice of Indian fiscal interests. To such men she gives her support and encouragement, and she has consequently been, throughout her long reign, a steady influence with both parties on the side of prefering national to party ends.

That she has achieved much in this direction is undoubted, and it is also undoubted that she has achieved it mainly by the absolute sincerity of her own character, and by its spontaneous power of distinguishing between the false and the true, the noble

and the ignoble. With all the temptations of her position, the possession of almost unlimited power from girlhood, she has chosen to live simply and to live laboriously; with everything before her that wealth could offer in the way of pleasure, she has never found her amusements in pursuits that bring to others sorrow and misery. She has ever been the true woman, and because a true woman therefore a great Queen.

In the earlier chapters of this little book an attempt was made to indicate the formative influences on the Queen's character, and a chief place was given, in this connection, to Baron Stockmar and to the Prince Consort. The bed-rock of the character of all three is the value they put on Love and Duty. Stockmar, towards the close of his life, wrote:

"Were I now to be asked by any young man just entering into life, 'What is the chief good for which it behooves a man to strive?' my only answer would be, Love and Friendship!' Were he to ask me, 'What is a man's most priceless possession? I must answer, 'The consciousness of having loved and sought the truth, of having yearned for the truth for its own sake!' All else is either vanity or a sick man's dream."

With a similar unconscious self-revelation, the Prince Consort wrote to his eldest daughter, almost immediately after her marriage, counselling her not to think of herself, but to think of duty and service. "If," he said, "you have succeeded in winning people's hearts by friendliness, simplicity, and courtesy, the secret lay in this, that you were not thinking of yourself. Hold fast this mystic power; it is a spark from heaven. The Queen's nature was full of responsive sympathy with these "spirits finely touched to fine issues." In her correspondence she too gives her conception of the secret of happiness. Characteristically enough, she finds her illustration in the person of her husband, and says how people are

struck, not only by his great power and energy, but also by his great self-denial, and constant wish to work for others. And "this," adds the Queen, "is the happiest life. Pining for what one cannot have, and trying to run after what is pleasantest, invariably end in disappointment.

This is the spirit which has enabled Her Majesty to fill her great position so worthily, and to have been, therefore, of untold service to the country she has loved so well.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF EVENTS.

1819. Birth of Princess Victoria at Kensington Palace, May 24th. 1820. Death of Duke of Kent. — Death of George III. — Accession of George IV. -Trial of Queen Caroline begun in House of

Lords in October; abandoned in November.

1822. Suicide of Lord Londonderry (Castlereagh). — Canning becomes Foreign Secretary.

1826. General Election. —Lord Liverpool Prime Minister.

1827. Death of Lord Liverpool. — Canning becomes Prime Minister, and dies in August of same year. — Lord Goderich succeeds him.

1828. Duke of Wellington Prime Minister

1829. Catholic Emancipation.

1830. Death of George IV. —Accession of William IV. - Regency Revolution in Paris. - Charles X. deposed.

Bill passed.

1831. Prince Leopold (widower of Princess Charlotte) becomes King of the Belgians. - First Reform Bill defeated - Dissolution. -Large majority in favor of Reform, and Bill immediately reintroduced.

1832. Reform Bill carried.

1833. Abolition of Slavery in British Dominions; £20,000,000 voted to compensate West Indian slave-owners.

1834. New Poor Law passed.

1835. The Orange Plot. — Lord Melbourne Prime Minister.

1836. First meeting between Princess Victoria and Prince Albert of

Coburg.

1837. Death of William IV..

Accession of Queen Victoria, June 20th. Insurrection in Canada.

1839. Sir Robert Peel's unsuccessful attempt to form a Ministry. Bedchamber question. - Queen's betrothal to Prince Albert. 1840. Queen's marriage. - Oxford's attempt on her life. - Birth of Princess Royal.

1841. General Election. Tory majority.. Sir R. Peel Prime Minister. Birth of Prince of Wales.

Afghan War.- Queen's first visit to Scotland. Second and third attempts on her life.

1843. Birth of Princess Alice. -Queen's visit to Louis Philippe at Château d'Eu.

1844. Visit of the Czar Nicholas to the Queen at Windsor. - Birth of Prince Alfred. -Louis Philippe's visit to Windsor. 1845. The Queen's first visit to Germany. - Peel resigns, but is recalled. Purchase of Osborne.

1846. Birth of Princess Helena. — Spanish marriages. — Irish Famine. Repeal of the Corn Laws. - Fall of Peel's Government.

Lord John Russell becomes Prime Minister, and Lord Palmerston Foreign Secretary. Lord George Bentinck the leader of Protectionist party.

1847. Irish famine. - General Election.

-Whig majority.

1848. Revolution in Paris. - Fall of Louis Philippe, who takes refuge in England. — Chartist movement in England. — Irish Rebellion. Birth of Princess Louise. - Purchase of Balmoral. 1849. The Queen's first visit to Ireland. — Enthusiastic reception. 1850. Birth of Prince Arthur. - Death of Sir Robert Peel.

1851. Opening of Great Exhibition. Coup d'Etat in Paris - Dismissal of Lord Palmerston.

1852. Fall of John Russell's Ministry. - Earl of Derby forms Government, which lasts ten months. - General Election. - Earl of Aberdeen, Prime Minister. - Death of Duke of Wellington.Recognition of Louis Napoleon as Emperor of the French. 1853. Birth of Prince Leopold. — Second visit to Ireland.-Outbreak of unpopularity against Prince Albert. — Marriage of Louis Napoleon.

1854. Alliance with Louis Napoleon. - Crimean War.

1855. Fall of Lord Aberdeen's Government. - Lord Palmerston Prime

Minister. -Death of the Czar. - Visits exchanged between
English and French Courts. - Fall of Sebastopol. - Betrothal
of Princess Royal to Prince Frederick William of Prussia.
Visit of Victor Emmanuel to Windsor.

1856. Death of Queen's half-brother. — Birth of Prince Imperial. 1857. Birth of Princess Beatrice. - Title of Prince Consort conferred on Prince Albert. - Indian Mutiny. - General Election. — Palmerston triumphant.

1858. Marriage of Princess Royal.

State visit of Queen to Cherbourg. Orsini's - Visit to Germany to Princess Royal. attempt to assassinate French Emperor. - Fall of Lord Palmerston's Government on Conspiracy Bill. Earl of Derby's Second Administration, lasting sixteen months. 1859. Birth of Queen's first grandchild, now Emperor William II. of Germany. Volunteer Movement. - General Election. Lord Palmerston again Prime Minister.

and Austria on Italian Question.

War between France

1860. Betrothal of Princess Alice to Prince Louis of Hesse. - Triumphal Entry of Garibaldi into Naples. — Abdication of King of Naples.