“In a sweet and thrilling voice, and with a composed mien which indicates rather the absorbing sense of august duty than an absence of emotion, THE QUEEN announces her accession to the throne of her ancestors, and her humble hope that Divine Providence will guard over the fulfilment of her lofty trust.  The prelates and captains and chief men of her realm then advance to the throne, and, kneeling before her, pledge their troth and take the sacred oaths of allegiance and supremacy—­allegiance to one who rules over the land that the great Macedonian could not conquer, and over a continent of which Columbus never dreamed:  to the Queen of every sea, and of nations in every zone.

“It is not of these that I would speak, but of a nation nearer her footstool, and which at this moment looks to her with anxiety, with affection, perhaps with hope.  Fair and serene, she has the blood and beauty of the Saxon.  Will it be her proud destiny at length to bear relief to suffering millions, and with that soft hand which might inspire troubadours and guerdon knights, break the last links in the chain of Saxon thraldom?”

To-day, with pride and thankfulness, chastened though it be by our sense of national shortcomings, we can answer Yes to this wistful question of genius and humanity.  We have seen the regulation of dangerous labour, the protection of women and children from excessive toil, the removal of the tax on bread, the establishment of a system of national education; and in Macaulay’s phrase, a point which yesterday was invisible is our goal to-day, and will be our starting-post to-morrow.

Her Majesty ascended the throne on the 20th of June 1837, and on the 29th the Times published a delightfully characteristic article against the Whig Ministers, “into whose hands the all but infant and helpless Queen has been compelled by her unhappy condition to deliver up herself and her indignant people.”  Bating one word, this might be an extract from an article on the formation of Mr. Gladstone’s Home Rule Government.  Surely the consistency of the Times in evil-speaking is one of the most precious of our national possessions:  On the 30th of June the Royal Assent was given by commission to forty Bills—­the first Bills which became law in the Queen’s reign; and, the clerks in the House of Lords having been accustomed ever since the days of Queen Anne to say “his Majesty” and “Le Roy le veult,” there was hopeless bungling over the feminine appellations, now after 130 years revived.  However, the Bills scrambled through somehow, and among them was the Act which abolished the pillory—­an auspicious commencement of a humane and reforming reign.  On the 8th of July came the rather belated burial of William IV. at Windsor, and on the 11th the newly completed Buckingham Palace was occupied for the first time, the Queen and the Duchess of Kent moving thither from Kensington.