The Russellville Democrat., 1882-06-29
Royal Ways.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 22ud.

Queen Victoria finished the for ty-fifth year of her reign on Tuesday. She has buried every Premier that has served under her except Glad stone. Ex-Queen Isabella is the only living person who was sovereign when the youthful Queen Victoria was crowned, and the idea that the latter has held her lucrative sinecure long enough finds vent III carpings which the conventional flunkeyism of her subjects fails to entirely sup press. Gossip is busy with her al legged heartlessness, avarice, mean ness, fondness of low company, and such like family foibles which are said to be cropping out in her old age as conspicuously as in any of her illustrious kinsmen that figured in Thackeray's lectures.
 They say that she actually turned a deaf ear to the most respectful so lieitations from the highest quarters, and insulted the mourning of the nation by insisting on holding her last drawing room during the tuner, al of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mir Burke, and did this that she might return to Scotland in time to participate in q servants ball. Spar. ing reluctantly but few short mo ments to the most important public ceremonials, refusing to act as host ess at the fetes given in her name, doing most of her social duties by proxy, disdaining and ignoring the receptions offered to her by the most loyal and highborn of her subjects, the Queen, they say, hankers after peasant gatherings, chfistenings and dances like a servant girl, if the scene Is near her favorite Scottish residence. The national pride is still further wounded by the enter. taining of foreign potentates in Clar idge's Hotel in return for the hospi- tality they extend to British princes in their own palaces abroad. It is thought an insult to every precedent of courtesy that foreign ambassadors summoned to present their creden- tials have to walk in full uniform from the railway station at Windsor to the castle when the Queen has so many equipages standing idle. The presentation of her photograph in q morocco case to the Shah of Persia is still entrusted with the Oriental splcndor of the Shah's presents to her. This suggests the pig skin purses, price 5 Sd, which the Prince of Wales lavlshed on the raiahs and nabobs of India when they loaded whole ships with costly presents to him. The board bill collected from the Government for the Empress of Russia when. she and her suite came as guests to attend the confinement of the Duchess of Edinburgh, is an other thing that otfends John Bulls ideas of hospitality, while his con tempt for penuriousness is aroused by the Queens instructions to her publisher to claim fall retail price, c. O. d., for each copy of her book she ordered sent to her daughters, the wives of foreign princes. and to other relatives of hers in foreign courts.
 John Bull naturally frets when he thinks of these things in connection with the munilicence of the Queens budget But no doubt he consoles himself with the reflection that the cost of maintaining royal family in magnificent idleness for rendering no public service whatever is still necessary to dazzle his own fancy and keep him from confessing to himself that monarchy rule in Eng land IS truly but "a barren ldeality."