The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-06-25 00:00:00

THE QUEEN'S JUBILEE.

Such an occasion as her Majesty's Jubilee has never
before occurred, not because other English Sovereigns
have never celebrated the fiftieth year of their reign,
but because the present Sovereign is a woman who
has reigned alone from early youth, and has con-
dacted herself in a manner typical of her sex. She
has shown herself a loving daughter to the mother
after whom she was named, a true and tender as well
as an ideally happy wife, and a good mother. A
woman who in private life has been all this com-
mands our respect, but when that woman is a Queen
whose whole life has been spent in the "fierce light
that beats upon a throne," from the age of eighteen to
that of sixty-eight, our respectleecomes reverence, and
our allegiance love.
There is no doubt whatever that her Majesty's
marriage was one of those rare unions in which there
was perfect trust and love, too happy perhaps to last.
Until the death of Princess Alice, the Queen never
knew what it was to lose a child, nor, except
in the case of her youngest eon, to have any
anxiety about the health of one. She early saw
her eldest daughter and her eldest son married well
and suitably, and has every reason to be proud of
the ulditional son and daughter thus given her.
The cup of joy was held to her lips in the very
opening of life, and she drank deeply of it; then
the tide turned, and she supped sorrow, though only
such sorrow as comes into the lives of most women,
and often makes them perfect through suffering.
The Queen was sympathetic in her best days, ready
as far as might be to share her own happiness with
others, Lind let its reflection shine on them. Since
the cloud of widowhood fell upon her, she has been
even more sympathetic. Her heart has gone out to
those in sorrow, and over and over again she has
stood as woman with woman, clasping the hands of
those who have been bereft.
But all the way through she has never negleeed.
bu.iness. At first she perused documents and wrote
letters and signed innumerable papers with the
"merry heart ' that "goes a' the way," and later on,
with the sad one that so speedily grew tired, she went
through the same routine unflinchingly with the day
star of duty still before her.
Queen Victoria has seen all the greatest improve-
ments of her century; she has seen her dominions
swell and increase till she is Empress ai well as
Queen. It has not altered her one whit from
the modest, kindly woman she has ale aye
been. Wherever she goes, if only for a
night, the little grandchildren of whom she has
taken charge go with her. A tiny girl, under the
eyes of her father and mother, and a good many
people beside, hands a bouquet, and the Queen
puts her arm round her and gives her a hearty kiss.
In a great throng she sees, at some little di stance
behind her, an aged clergyman, not by any means
one of the dignitaries of the Church, just a city
vicar, and she steps backwards and holds out her
hand, and saya cordially how glad she is to see him.
She loves fresh air and healthy exercise, and all the
sights and sounds of Nature. Her home circle is her
centre, and she dwells among her own people, now at
stately Windsor, now among the Northern mountains,
and as often a 3 she can within sound of the sea as it
laps the very edge of her gardens at Osborne.
What more could a nation wish? and what better
recnrd can any human being show? It is well that
we should keep our Queen's Jubilee with glad and
grateful hearts, and exult in being the subjects of a
Sovereign on whose realm for fifty years the sun has
never set.—The Indy.