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The Queen.

THE PROGRESS OF THE WORLD.

LONDON, October 1st, 1896.

Her Majesty has now broken all records. No one before her has ever occupied the English throne for so long a period. The third

Henry, Edward and George, who with Henry VI. reigned longest of our sovereigns, were all distanced on the 23rd ult., when Queen Victoria passed the landmark which marked the duration of her grandfather's reign. Her Majesty will not complete her sixtieth year of queenship until June next, when, if all goes well, there will be throughout her worldencircling Empire a celebration befitting an occasion so auspicious and unique. The prayer of the National Anthem has been answered in her case, with the result that there is a much more general disposition to cry Amen to its sturdy petitions than there was when she came to the throne. We have had sixty years of her sovereignty, and we are still not satisfied. We ask for more. For we shall never have a better sovereign, or one whose reign will leave a more dazzling record in the annals of our race. We have indeed grown so accustomed to think of the monarch as the Queen, that it will be awkward indeed, when the time comes and may it be far distant-when we shall have to speak once again of the King. England has prospered so well under its female sovereigns that many are disposed to think it would be well if we never could have any other. Of course no oxe seriously thinks of passing such an inverted Salic law, but so great is the force of use and wont, and so much more splendid have been our national achievements under Elizabeth, Anne, and Victoria than under our kings, that there would be a distinct sense of satisfaction experienced if it could be

The

King.

decreed by the fates that for the English throne in the future no man need apply. There is no disparagement in this to the Heir Apparent, who his intimates say will probably make as good a sovereign as a king can be. But not even an Act of Parliament can make him into a queen.

The Tsar.

It was an event of good omen that the month in which our Queen thus broke the record for length of reign-she had long before broken all previous records in every other field-found the Tsar her honoured guest at Balmoral. Up there in the Scotch Highlands one roof sheltered the two potentates upon whom Destiny has conferred the overlordship of the Asiatic continent. England and Russia (unlimited) is the name of the firm charged with the liquidation of the affairs of that bankrupt continent, which once dominated the world, and when the heads of the firm met to talk things over in friendly fashion in the holiday home of the Queen, all friends of peace and progress rejoiced. What came of it, whether anything of immediate practical result will come of it, no one at this moment can say. But nothing but good can come of the deepening and strengthening of the intimate personal tie which binds the oldest and the youngest occupants of Imperial thrones. In the intimate and affectionate relations that exist between Nicholas II. and his wife, and Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales, lies one of the best securities for the peace and tranquillity of the world.

The Republic.

France, which before these pages see the light will have passed through the thrilling experience of acclaiming the Autocrat of all the Russias as the virtual Dictator

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of the Republic, has no such personal link to supplement the evanescent cobweb that may be spun by the Ministers who occupy the Quai D'Orsay to-day and to-morrow are seen no more. Not SO long ago the spectacle of the Tsar being received by the whole French nation as if he had been a Divine Figure from the North delivering a province from the yoke of the Turk would have created some alarm in Berlin and in London. To-day Europe looks on without even a thrill of uneasiness. For it is understood now, even by those who professed at first to see in the Franco-Russian entente a menace to the peace of the Continent, that it was entered into not for war, but for peace. The Kaiser indeed is said to have harangued the Tsar at Breslau in this sense. France wished with a passionate longing to be afforded an excuse that

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a the same time it supplied an absolute veto upon the war which every Frenchman dreads. Henceforth when any patriot howls for the Revanche an extinguisher is ready at hand. French Ministers now can say, whenever there are any difficulties to be smoothed over with Germany, and the Chauvinists clamour for war, "My dear patriots, I am with you, heart and soul. If the decision lay with me war could be declared to-night. But, you see, I must consult my partner Jorkins at St. Petersburg, and he won't hear of it. Not on any account. I am awfully sorry quite in despair. But I've done my

best with Jorkins, and it's no go." So the Ministerial Spenlow in Paris will not declare war, and the Russian Jorkins will maintain his right to the proud title of the Prince of the Peace of Europe.

The Sultan.

It is, however, neither the Queen nor the Tsar whose personality has commanded most attention this last month. Of all mortals, Abdul Hamid has just now succeeded in realising the ambition of Young's hero, of whom it was written

Fain would he make the world his pedestal,
Mankind the gazers, ,.the sole figure he.

No other figure has for the month loomed so black against the sky. The Sultan, whom Mr. Gladstone delights to call the Assassin, but of whom Lord Beaconsfield declared "his every impulse is good," must marvel somewhat at the excitement occasioned by what the Infidels of the West persist in calling the massacres of Constantinople. Similar measures of necessary severity he has ordered month after month any time these last two years, and there has been next to no outcry. Now that he has had a few thousands of these dogs of Giaours removed expeditiously and effectively from the city, whose tranquillity they endangered, all England is blazing with rhetorical pyrotechnics, and even the craven crew of ambassadors are waxing insolent. It must seem very strange to him. As strange as it would to us if the whole American Republic were to go into a frenzy of indignation because the London police consigned a fresh instalment of ownerless dogs to the lethal chamber at Battersea. Our police have extinguished the lives of some 40,000 innocent unfortunate fellowcreatures of the canine species in that way this year to the great advantage of the metropolis. And nobody in America has made a protest. How absurd it would be if, after having preserved an imperturb able silence over the 40,000, our cousins were to go into hysterics over the next batch of 5,000 doomed dogs. Such, we may depend upon it, are the reflections of Abdul the Damned, Lord Beaconsfield's Sultan of Good Impulses.

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lious urchin, after admonition had been tried in vain, was solemnly removed to a class-room, in the centre of which he was compelled to stand, while а choir recruited from the school filed in and formed a circle round the room. When all were in their places, the choir struck up the lugubrious tune that was set to that famous old hymn written for the discouragement of the ungodly, which begins, "There is a dreadful Hell, Where sinners must with devils dwell." Over and over and over again rose and fell that fearsome chant, until cowed by the imminence of the fiery doom that awaited them, the stubborn rascal broke down and discipline was established. The British public all this month has been trying the plan of Coercion by Chorus on the Sultan. But so far the charm does not seem to work.

"A

D-."

Last month there was a great lull in Great Big politics, every one was away taking holidays, and those who remained at home had no leisure, and took no interest in any other subject beyond the massacres in Turkey. We have had a great outburst of indignation, public meetings have been held everywhere, and if good, round, hard swearing from high and low in every key of profanity or of prayer could have settled the Eastern Question, then assuredly it had been settled this week. Unfortunately the influence of so much strong language has not been perceptible at Constantinople. The Sultan indeed appears to be impervious to argument or to persuasion other than that uttered by the Masters of many Legions, or the owners of ships that are not afraid to use their big guns. The wave of passionate indignation which has swept through the land has produced an astonishing fraternisation, the meetings in almost every case being addressed alternately by Liberals and Conservatives, while Churchmen and Dissenters vied with each other in expressing their detestation of a Sovereign who orders and carries out, with careful elaboration, the massacre of some 8,000 unarmed subjects at the very gates of his own Palace. Lord Rosebery has written and spoken, so have Mr. Bryce and Mr. Asquith, and Mr. Gladstone has emerged from his retirement at Hawarden to deliver once more a great philippic against the Turk. But the other leaders have been silent, and Ministers have hardly uttered a word. The one political event of the month has been the re-appearance of Mr. Gladstone on the platform. He spoke at Liverpool, at a meeting called to consider the Armenian question, and displayed all

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