The Portland daily press., 1875-02-19
The Victorian Age.

There was once "Virgin Queen" of
! doubtful reputation and violent temper, who
wore immense ruffs and boxed the ears of her
maids. When she was yet young she said to
her Catholic sister, Queen Mary, that she
chopped to die'' if she was not as good pa
plst as could anywhere be found. But after
she came to be queen by this maidenly ''pre-
varication" she threw off all disguise and be-
| came the acknowledged head of the Protest
ant church. When she was old she was so
detestable that her attendants indemnified
themselves for the asperity with which she
had treated them in the past by painting her
nose red and her cheeks white. The Cecils,
Essex, Leicester, Raleigh, Drake, Howard
and other statesmen and soldiers raised her
kingdom to high rank among the nations Of
the world. The amazing genius of Francis
Bacon began to expand during her reign, but
he gained little prefermert because the Vir-
gin Queen said that though he had wit and
learning he was ''not very Deep" Shakes
peare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Spenser.
Marowe and many more immortals made
the England of the sixteenth century illustri-
GUS forever. And the age is called the Eliza
bethan age from Henry Tudor's daughter,
who was so good as to live and wear robe,
crown and other ornamental spangles and
ribbons at the public expense while the celeb
rites above enumerated were doing their
work.
There was once an Insignificant little Ro-
man, named Octavius. He was so tmid that
he was afraid of swords and of the dark. By
virtue of being Julius Caesars grand nephew
he obtained consideration at Rome after the
great warriors death. Afterwards, conquer.
ing Antony through authority obtained by
courtng Cicero and through the generalship
of the last of the real consuls, Hirtius and
Pausa, he was suspected of causing the death
of the consuls, and he certainly cemented his
renewed friendship with Antony by consent
ing to the murder of the greatest of Roman
orators. By the military skill of Antony he
| conquered Brutus and Cassius at Phillip, and
subsequently overthrew Antony a second
time at Actium through the skill of Agrippa,
while he himself lay pale and trembling in
his tent. So the little, malicious and hypo-
critical Octavus became Augustus" the
Majestic, and the age in which he lived, men,
orable for the words and deeds ofhis Mecenas
Virgil, Cicero, Horace, Ovid and score o
others is Augustan Age.
There is dumpy little woman living in
Britain who dwells sometimes in or near Lon
don but commonly in the Isle of Wight or the
II Ill lie. Sl,n1 hall 70 far, ilx
whose virtues are welkdeseribed in Thacker
avs lectures on the Four Georges and a late
volume of memoirs by former clerk OF the
Privy Council. She is the mother of large
family and was good wife to an estimable
gentleman concerning whom her literary
courtiers have written various biographies and
| recollections which are published as from the
pen of Victoria. When Mr.. Disraeli or Mr.
Gladstone or whoever may be Premier for th'
time wishes to prorogue or dissolve Parlia-
ment, this little woman who according tC
profane American journals has red nose anG
most ungyac ious manner, nomnally per
forms the executive ceremony. Some times
she makes "speech from the throne,'
which is carefully prepared for her by the
minister with a view to the rigorous exclusion
therefrom. This woman has never done OF
said, so far as is known, one memorable
thing and is in no wise remarkable when
compared with tens of thousands OF
good wives and mothers in Great Britain.
She, with her family, costs the taxpayers Of
England several millions of pounds annually
enough to pay the salaries of the President o.
the United States and his cabinet ministers
for long series of years. She is immensely
rich but contributes 10 charities with notori-
ously meager measure. She has spent the
last decade in mourning the death OF Prince
Albert, to the utter neglect of such small GER
emonial duties as are even now expected OF
constitutional sovereign. In her time Spen-
Ger, Darwin, Faraday, Lyell, Lockyer, Hux-
ley and Tyndall have so employed
strument of the mighty Bacon. as to
extend indefinitely the domain of hu-
man knowledge and greatly to ameliorate
the condition of mankind. Buckle, Macau-
ley and Froude, Carlyle, Mill and Gladstone,
in their various branches of literature;
Franklin, McCulloch, Livingstone, Speke,
Grant, Baker and other intrepid explorers in
geography; Tennyson, the Brownings, Jean
| Ingelow, Barry Cornwall and Swinburne in
poetry; and especially Dickens, Thackeray,
Disraeli, Bulwer and George Eliot in fiction,
have made the present veritable golden age
of English letters. And now the newspa-
pers and periodicals, with most servile and
disgusting imitation of the toadyism of ear
lier and ruder times, are beginning to call it
the Victorian age. What poor little rag of
scarlet cloth does the Great Eastern carry
down to the deep, floating as pennant at
its masthead!