The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-06-20

deprivation chaste." Scandal followed her
through life, and, since her death, has been
buster still.
1t were an inlpertinence to discuss any
such question with reference to Queen Vic
toria. Among all her titles to the honor
and esteem and affection OF her subjects,
and of the world In general, none is more
indisputable than the pre-eminent beauty
Of her stainless domestic life. To the En-
glish above all others thar has always APP
pealed and appeals still. Her pride was
not in being virgin Queen. but in her nine
children, and ninety, more or less. grand
children and great grandchildren, who
make the succession to the throne of Great
Britain secure as long as the throne itself
shall last. Her twenty-one years of mar
ried life were years-she has taken the pub
lie into her conidence-of perfect human
happiness III there be reproach, 1t is that
in the greatness of her grief for lost hus-
band she withdrew too completely from So
cial life and has ever since kept apart from
the world. She relinquished, that is the
natural headship of society, and II English
society has in these latter days come under
some censure for its license it may be per-
missible to suppose that the Queens in
fluence would have kept things straight
Ildu she out continued TO exert II.
If Victoria had had but some of Eliza
beths vanity and taste for display, even
that might have served her we'll Love of
jewels, and Dress and pageantry of all
kinds is not, perhaps, unbeftting a Queen
who has a great part to play, and must
play it greatly before the eyes of the world
The two thousand gorgeous dresses in
Elizabeths wardrobe will never find par
allel in the modest array of Victoria who
has never been seen abroad in any but the
simplest attire-too simple, were it not that
her distinction of manner is such as to dis
pense with other distinctions.
VICTORIA ALWAYS SAFE.
Queen Victoria has sat for sixty years
upon a throne which has never been threat
ened, for of peril to the monarchy from
without there has been none, and within
the little knots of men who called them
selves republicans have never been other
than contemplate But never till the defeat
of the Armada, in 1883, was Elizabeth safe
from foreign foes, nor till the year before
that did the domestic and other plots of
which Mary Queen of Scots was the CEN
trail figure come to end with the be-
heading of the woman who was the incar-
nation of the Roman Catholic cause. What
Elizabeth did during all this long struggle
was to unite the English people in defense
of England they had not been united
before; to crush the party of Rome within
her kingdom; to replace an unpatriotic
fealty to the Pope by a sentiment of gen.
eral loyalty to herself and to the land to
make England all English instead of part
Papist, and so to order matters that
"thenceforward no Italian priest should
1.-THE or toll in her dominions;" to stretch
her scepter over the sea, and especially
over the seas where Spain had been mis-
tress and England now became mistress in
her stead With all that, she established
and consolidated the Church of England as
it exists to-day-the church of compromise,
of compromise born out of war on Papist
and Puritan alike. In an age when disputes
of dogma, of faith, of theology, of one
church or another, all calling themselves
religious disputes were the points on which
the policy of great kingdoms and empires
SO often turned, her victorious champion
ship of Professionalism and her lasting foun-
dat Z the English Church is not the
leaA part of great Elizabeth's fame.
In the reign of Victoria there could be
nothing quite like that. But there are two
conceptions of state--one which regards
il as a political entity, the other which re-
CARDS it as a mass of individuals. This liv-
ing Queen has had her share in the rule of
both. She has seen her empire enormously
extended, she has seen her greatest de-
tendency saved by fire, she has fought con-
siderable and many less considerable wars
little wars from which there is never a
respite she has put on her head the da-
dem of an Empress; she has kept ireland
against plots and rebellons on Irish soil
and against those more dangerous schemes
of disintegration which two men of great
political genius-one Irish, the other Eng
lish--combined to carry out by civil means.
THE REALLY GREAT WORK.
But it will probably always be thought
that the great work of these sixty years
has been what MIR. Gladstone calls a WORK
of emancipatol--a work partly of political
liberation, partly of social ameloration.
Into the details of either have no space to
enter even I'm the briefest way. But it is
a work which has tended to the welfare
of the state in so far as it has improved
the condition of the people who compose
the state.
1t ought, therefore, to have made the
people more contented, more loyal, more
devoted to the form of government under
which they live-more loyal better English
men. Whether it has done this may be
doubted. Whether is has, in truth, left Eng
land stronger or weaker as against a for
eign enemy may be doubted. There is to
my mind no question that the English
would fight as readily as ever though they
might not fight for the same thing or in
the same cause as of old. Patriotism means
a different state of mind at different
epochs But the naval and military power
of England has, at any rate, grown with
her growth so that the Queen will have it
TO say when she departs that she leaves
her kingdom stronger than she found it,
and that there is no single enemy whom
England does not oyermatch, nor any two
whom she need fear combined. Her own
share in this steady increase of naval pow
er has not been slight, but, whatever may
have been her share, the worldwide SUI
premacy of England on sea is part of the
glory of her reign.
Into what may come after it were early
to inquire Elizabeth was succeeded by
James-a King who squandered the pres
tige she had won. The present Prince of
Wales is certainly no James, no pedant or
driveler, but neither has he had that train
ing in craftsmanship which his mother has
had all through her long life. He will in
herit the crown; he cannot inherit the ac-
cumulated experience and ripe wisdom
which the Queen, with her sixty years of
contact with great affairs, possesses in UNI