This print was given to me by a veteran Reformer, who told me that it expressed in visible form the universal sentiment of England.  That sentiment was daily and hourly confirmed by all that was heard and seen of the girl-queen.  We read of her walking with a gallant suite upon the terrace at Windsor; dressed in scarlet uniform and mounted on her roan charger, to receive with uplifted hand the salute of her troops; or seated on the throne of the Plantagenets at the opening of her Parliament, and invoking the Divine benediction on the labours which should conduce to “the welfare and contentment of My people.”  We see her yielding her bright intelligence to the constitutional guidance, wise though worldly, of her first Prime Minister, the sagacious Melbourne.  And then, when the exigencies of parliamentary government forced her to exchange her Whig advisers for the Tories, we see her carrying out with exact propriety the lessons taught by “the friend of her youth,” and extending to each premier in turn, whether personally agreeable to her or not, the same absolute confidence and loyalty.

As regards domestic life, we have been told by Mr. Gladstone that “even among happy marriages her marriage was exceptional, so nearly did the union of thought, heart, and action both fulfil the ideal and bring duality near to the borders of identity.”

And so twenty years went on, full of an ever-growing popularity, and a purifying influence on the tone of society never fully realized till the personal presence was withdrawn.  And then came the blow which crushed her life—­“the sun going down at noon”—­and total disappearance from all festivity and parade and social splendour, but never from political duty.  In later years we have seen the gradual resumption of more public offices; the occasional reappearances, so earnestly anticipated by her subjects, and hedged with something of a divinity more than regal; the incomparable majesty of personal bearing which has taught so many an onlooker that dignity has nothing to do with height, or beauty or splendour of raiment; and, mingled with that majesty and unspeakably enhancing it, the human sympathy with suffering and sorrow, which has made Queen Victoria, as none of her predecessors ever was or could be, the Mother of her People.

And the response of the English people to that sympathy—­the recognition of that motherhood—­is written, not only in the printed records of the reign, but on the “fleshly tables” of English hearts.  Let one homely citation suffice as an illustration.  It is taken from a letter of condolence addressed to the Queen in 1892, on the death of Prince “Eddie,” Duke of Clarence:—­

“To our beloved Queen, Victoria.