[Illustration:  The Czarina of Russia.]

But there is no selfish absorption in her own family affairs, no neglect of essential duty.  The Prince of Wales and “the Princess” relieve the Queen of many irksome social functions; but she does not shun these when it is clear to her that her people wish her to undertake them.  Witness her willingness to take part in the Jubilee Thanksgiving services and pageant, despite the feebleness of her advanced age.

We need not dwell long on the rather stormy Parliamentary history of the last decade, on the divisions and disappointments of the Irish Home Rule party, once so powerful, or on the various attacks aimed at the Welsh and Scottish Church establishments and at the principle of “hereditary legislation” as embodied in the House of Lords.  Some useful legislation has been accomplished amid all the strife.  We may instance the Act in 1888 creating the new system of County Councils, the Parish Councils Act, the Factory and Workshops Amendment Act, and the Education Act of 1891—­measures designed to protect the toiling millions from the evils of “sweating,” and to assure their children of practically free education.

Substantial good has been done, whether the reins of power have been held by Mr. Gladstone or by Lord Salisbury—­whose long tenure of office expiring in 1892, the veteran statesman whom he had displaced again took the helm—­or by Lord Rosebery, in whose favour the great leader finally withdrew in 1894 into private life, weary of the burden of State.  In 1897 we again see Lord Salisbury directing the destinies of the mighty empire—­a task of exceptional difficulty, now that the gravest complications exist in Europe itself and in Africa.  The horrors suffered by the Armenian subjects of the Turk have called for intervention by the great powers; but no sooner had Turkish reforms been promised in response to the joint note of Great Britain, France, and Russia, than new troubles began in Crete, its people rising in arms to shake off the Turkish yoke.

Meanwhile our occupation of Egypt is compelling us to use armed force against the wild, threatening dervishes in the Soudan, and well-grounded uneasiness is felt as to the position and action of our countrymen in Southeastern Africa in connexion with the Boer republic of the Transvaal.  The British South Africa Chartered Company, formed in 1889, adventurous and ambitious, loomed large in men’s eyes during 1896, when the historic and disastrous raid of Dr. Jameson and his followers startled the civilised world.  The whole story of that enterprise is yet to unfold; but it has added considerably to the embarrassments of the British government.  Hopes were entertained in 1890 that the British East Africa Company, by the pressure it could put on the Sultan of Zanzibar, had secured the cessation of the slave trade on the East African shore; these hopes are not yet fulfilled, but it may be trusted that a step has been taken towards the mitigation of the evil—­the “open sore of the world.”