The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1883-07-12
Queen Victoria's Loneliness.

The Queen has survived not only her
husband, but almost all relatives of her
own time, all her earlier political
friends, and an entire groupe of closely
attached dependents, like Sir G. Phipps,
Sir Arthur Helps, and many others less
known to the general world, says the
London Spectator. There is no one liv-
ing who could address her by her Chris
tian name, or, indeed, on any terms of
equality; while all her children but one
are married, scattered, immersed in
business and households of their own.
1t is a lonely peak to sit on, at the top
of the world, and as age draws on the
Sovereign, who already has reigned so
long that men passing middle age have
consciously known no other, must feel
this more and more painfully, with q
sadness which the movement of the
world does not diminish. The Queen
has had no misfortunes such as have af-
flicted many OF her predecessors, no
loss of subjects like George Ill, no loss
of public honor like George w., but she
has to bear the burden of an ever-in-
creasing pressure of the interests, Incl
dents, movements of mankind, of all of
which she must to herself seem the CEN
tire. Nothing eventful can happen in
the world which is not in some way or
other borne in pressingly on the Queen.
The special feature of the age the new
complexity of life arising from rapid
communication, began shortly before
her accession-Huskisson was killed in
1S30-and from that moment to this af-
fairs must have seemed to press in ever
increasing volume upon her, as If the
very atmosphere had grown more weigh
ty. Imagine what the telegraph alone
has been to the Queen. To feel imper-
ative duties increasing, and strength de-
caying, and life growing more and more
lonely, is a sad position for any one;
but what must it be to Sovereign who
receives every day evidence that she is
one of the central figures of the world,
who hears Monday that all America is
glad because the report of an accident
to her had proved exaggerated, Tues
day that an Indian tribe had accepted
her as Goddess, Wednesday that her
laughter, one day to be Empress of
Germany, has celebrated her silver we'd
ding with Princes for train bearers,
Thursday that a plot has been discover
ed which renders doubled watchfulness
necessary round Windsor? 1t is a
strange position, one not to be desired,
and, remember, it must be judged not
from the constitutional point of view
that the Queen onl y accepts advice, but
from her own point of view that the
Queen, after taking advice, gives her
own commands No monarch ever vet
quite lost the feeling that, in some in
describable way, he was himself, in
some special degree, responsible for the
| welfare of the people, and in that re-
sponsibility alone, be it as unreal as it
may-and Englishmen often underrate
the Queens direct influence on affairs
lis a burden which, to q lonely woman,
long experience teaches us what to do,
| but teaches also how useless the doing
often is. We are no devotees of mon
| archy, gravely holding self-government
| to be more educative and more digni-
| fed; but there has never been in history
reign ike That OF Queen Victoria,
who, surrounded by an impenetrable
etiquette, breaks it to tell her people
chat devotion, even in the humblest of
followers, has reused in her ''real friend
| ship" Republicanism in England
sleeps. and will sleep while the Queen
| reigns. Is there not in that mere tru-,
SIN a sufficient biography