Great Britain and Her Queen
Anne E. Keeling
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GREAT BRITAIN AND HER QUEEN by ANNE E. KEELING Author of "General Gordon: Hero and Saint," "The Oakhurst Chronicles," "Andrew Golding," etc. Second Edition. Revised and Enlarged, 1897 [Illustration: Queen Victoria] [Illustration: Claremont] CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE GIRL QUEEN AND HER KINGDOM CHAPTER II. STORM AND SUNSHINE CHAPTER III. FRANCE AND ENGLAND CHAPTER IV. THE CRIMEAN WAR CHAPTER V. INDIA CHAPTER VI. THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROWS CHAPTER VII. CHANGES GOOD AND EVIL CHAPTER VIII. OUR COLONIES CHAPTER IX. INTELLECTUAL AND SPIRITUAL PROGRESS CHAPTER X. PROGRESS OF THE EMPIRE FROM 1887 TO 1897 CHAPTER XI. PROGRESS OF WESLEYAN METHODISM UNDER QUEEN VICTORIA, 1837-1897 CONCLUSION LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Queen Victoria Claremont The Coronation of Queen Victoria Kensington Palace Duchess of Kent Elizabeth Fry Rowland Hill Father Mathew George Stephenson Wheatstone St. James's Palace Prince Albert The Queen in Her Wedding-Dress Sir Robert Peel Daniel O'Connell Richard Cobden John Bright Lord John Russell Thomas Chalmers John Henry Newmann Balmoral Buckingham Palace Napoleon III The Crystal Palace, 1851 Lord Ashley Earl of Derby Duke of Wellington Florence Nightingale Lord Canning Sir Colin Campbell Henry Havelock Sir John Lawrence Windsor Castle Prince Frederick William Princess Royal Charles Kingsley Lord Palmerston Abraham Lincoln and his son Princess Alice The Mausoleum Dr. Norman Macleod Prince of Wales Princess of Wales Osborne House Sir Robert Napier Mr. Gladstone Lord Beaconsfield Lord Salisbury General Gordon Duke of Albany Duchess of Albany Sydney Heads Robert Southey William Wordsworth Alfred Tennyson Robert Browning Charles Dickens W. M. Thackeray Charlotte Bronte Lord Macaulay Thomas Carlyle William Whewell, D.D. Sir David Brewster Sir James Y. Simpson Michael Faraday David Livingstone Sir John Franklin John Ruskin Dean Stanley "I was sick, and ye visited me" Duke of Connaught The Imperial Institute Duke of Clarence Duke of York Duchess of York Princess Henry of Battenberg Prince Henry of Battenberg The Czarina of Russia H. M. Stanley Dr. Fridtjof Nansen Miss Kingsley J. M. Barrie Richard Jefferies Rev. J. G. Wood Dean Church Professor Huxley Professor Tyndall C. H. Spurgeon Dr. Horatius Bonar Sir J. E. Millais, P.R.A. Sir Frederick Leighton, P.R.A. Wesley preaching on his father's tomb Group of Presidents:--No. 1 Centenary Meeting at Manchester Key to Centenary Meeting Wesleyan Centenary Hall Group of Presidents:--No. 2 Sir Francis Lycett The Methodist Settlement, Bermondsey. London, S.E. Theological Institution, Richmond Theological Institution, Didsbury Theological Institution, Headingley Theological Institution, Handsworth Kingswood School, Bath The North House, Leys School, Cambridge Queen's College, Taunton Wesley College, Sheffield Children's Home, Bolton Westminster Training College and Schools Group of Presidents:--No. 3 [Illustration: The Coronation of Queen Victoria] GREAT BRITAIN AND HER QUEEN. [Illustration: Kensington Palace] CHAPTER I. THE GIRL-QUEEN AND HER KINGDOM. Rather more than one mortal lifetime, as we average life in these later days, has elapsed since that June morning of 1837, when Victoria of England, then a fair young princess of eighteen, was roused from her tranquil sleep in the old palace at Kensington, and bidden to rise and meet the Primate, and his dignified associates the Lord Chamberlain and the royal physician, who "were come on business of state to the Queen"--words of startling import, for they meant that, while the royal maiden lay sleeping, the aged King, whose heiress she was, had passed into the deeper sleep of death. It is already an often-told story how promptly, on receiving that summons, the young Queen rose and came to meet her first homagers, standing before them in hastily assumed wrappings, her hair hanging loosely, her feet in slippers, but in all her hearing such royally firm composure as deeply impressed those heralds of her greatness, who noticed at the same moment that her eyes were full of tears. This little scene is not only charming and touching, it is very significant, suggesting a combination of such qualities as are not always found united: sovereign good sense and readiness, blending with quick, artless feeling that sought no disguise--such feeling as again betrayed itself when on her ensuing proclamation the new Sovereign had to meet her people face to face, and stood before them at her palace window, composed but sad, the tears running unchecked down her fair pale face. That rare spectacle of simple human emotion, at a time when a selfish or thoughtless spirit would have leaped in exultation, touched the heart of England deeply, and was rightly held of happy omen. The nation's feeling is aptly expressed in the glowing verse of Mrs. Browning, praying Heaven's blessing on the "weeping Queen," and prophesying for her the love, happiness, and honour which have been hers in no stinted measure. "Thou shalt be well beloved," said the poetess; there are very few sovereigns of whom it could be so truly said that they _have_ been well beloved, for not many have so well deserved it. The faith of the singer has been amply justified, as time has made manifest the rarer qualities joyfully divined in those early days in the royal child, the single darling hope of the nation. Once before in the recent annals of our land had expectations and desires equally ardent centred themselves on one young head. Much of the loyal devotion which had been alienated from the immediate family of George III. had transferred itself to his grandchild, the Princess Charlotte, sole offspring of the unhappy marriage between George, Prince of Wales, and Caroline of Brunswick. The people had watched with vivid interest the young romance of Princess Charlotte's happy marriage, and had bitterly lamented her too early death--an event which had overshadowed all English hearts with forebodings of disaster. Since that dark day a little of the old attachment of England to its sovereigns had revived for the frank-mannered sailor and "patriot king," William IV; but the hopes crushed by the death of the much-regretted Charlotte had renewed themselves with even better warrant for Victoria. She was the child of no ill-omened, miserable marriage, but of a fitting union; her parents had been sundered only by death, not by wretched domestic dissensions. People heard that the mortal malady which deprived her of a father had been brought about by the Duke of Kent's simple delight in his baby princess, which kept him playing with the child when he should have been changing his wet outdoor garb; and they found something touching and tender in the tragic little circumstance. And everything that could be noticed of the manner in which the bereaved duchess was training up her precious charge spoke well for the mother's wisdom and affection, and for the future of the daughter. It was indeed a happy day for England when Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III, was wedded to Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, the widowed Princess of Leiningen--happy, not only because of the admirable skill with which that lady conducted her illustrious child's education, and because of the pure, upright principles, the frank, noble character, which she transmitted to that child, but because the family connection established through that marriage was to be yet further serviceable to the interests of our realm. Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg was second son of the Duchess of Kent's eldest brother, and thus first cousin of the Princess Victoria--"the Mayflower," as, in fond allusion to the month of her birth, her mother's kinsfolk loved to call her: and it has been made plain that dreams of a possible union between the two young cousins, very nearly of an age, were early cherished by the elders who loved and admired both. [Illustration: Duchess of Kent. From an Engraving by Messrs. P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., Pall Mall East.] The Princess's life, however, was sedulously guarded from all disturbing influences. She grew up in healthy simplicity and seclusion; she was not apprised of her nearness to the throne till she was twelve years old; she had been little at Court, little in sight, but had been made familiar with her own land and its history, having received the higher education so essential to her great position; while simple truth and rigid honesty were the very atmosphere of her existence. From such a training much might be hoped; but even those who knew most and hoped most were not quite prepared for the strong individual character and power of self-determination that revealed themselves in the girlish being so suddenly transferred "from the nursery to the throne." It was quickly noticed that the part of Queen and mistress seemed native to her, and that she filled it with not more grace than propriety. "She always strikes me as possessed of singular penetration, firmness, and independence," wrote Dr. Norman Macleod in 1860; acute observers in 1837 took note of the same traits, rarer far in youth than in full maturity, and closely connected with the "reasoning, searching" quality of her mind, "anxious to get at the root and reality of things, and abhorring all shams, whether in word or deed." [Footnote] [Footnote: "Life of Norman Macleod, D.D." vol. ii.] It was well for England that its young Sovereign could exemplify virile strength as well as womanly sweetness; for it was indeed a cloudy and dark day when she was called to her post of lonely grandeur and hard responsibility; and to fill that post rightly would have overtasked and overwhelmed a feebler nature. It is true that the peace of Europe, won at Waterloo, was still unbroken. But already, within our borders and without them, there were the signs of coming storm. The condition of Ireland was chronically bad; the condition of England was full of danger; on the Continent a new period of earth-shaking revolution announced itself not doubtfully. It would be hardly possible to exaggerate the wretched state of the sister isle, where fires of recent hate were still smouldering, and where the poor inhabitants, guilty and guiltless, were daily living on the verge of famine, over which they were soon to be driven. Their ill condition much aggravated by the intemperate habits to which despairing men so easily fall a prey. The expenditure of Ireland on proof spirits alone had in the year 1829 attained the sum of L6,000,000. In England many agricultural labourers were earning starvation wages, were living on bad and scanty food, and were housed so wretchedly that they might envy the hounds their dry and clean kennels. A dark symptom of their hungry discontent had shown itself in the strange crime of rick-burning, which went on under cloud of night season after season, despite the utmost precautions which the luckless farmers could adopt. The perpetrators were not dimly guessed to be half-famished creatures, taking a mad revenge for their wretchedness by destroying the tantalising stores of grain, too costly for their consumption; the price of wheat in the early years of Her Majesty's reign and for some time previously being very high, and reaching at one moment (1847) the extraordinary figure of a hundred and two shillings per quarter.Next All
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