Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1899-07-15
WHAT VICTORIA HAS SEEN.

WHAT VICTORIA HAS SEEN.
Fresh Suggestions of the Worlds Marvel
GUS Progress During Her Life.
From Leslies Weekly.
"Crowned heads hold low place in
the space of longevity" If the French
author of this expression had foreseen
Victoria his assertion would not have
been quite so sweeping. England's
queen born 80 years ago, has long
passed the Psalmists span of years.
She has gone much farther beyond the
average official life of the worlds
crown -wearers. Sixty-two years will
have passed on June 20, since she as
cended the throne. This exceeds in
duration by over two years the reign
of her grandfather, George ILL.,, hith-
erto unexampled in British annals.
No other monarch of great nation in
the worlds history has been on the
throne as long except Louis XIV. of
France, 70 years, and he was only five
years of age when he became titular
king, and during bis minority his
mother ruled in his stead as regent.
Victoria, however, was Is at the time
her predecessor died, and she has ex-
erted sway ever since.
Victoria during her lifetime has seen
the entire world transformed. On the
day of her birth, May "a, 1919, the
first steamboat which ever crossed the
Atlantic or any other ocean started
from Savannah for Liverpool, making
the voyage in 26 days. The same dis
tance is now made in less than six.
She was six years of age when the
first railway train in the world started
to carry passengers. She was lS years
of age, and had just assembled the
throne, when the Morse system of tel
egraphy and that of Cooke and Wheat
stone were first patented. Thirty nine
years of her life had passed when the
first cable was laid under the Atlantic,
and that one almost Immediately
ceased to operate. Fifty-six years of
it expired before the first telephone
went into practical operation.
Scott and Byron were in their prime
when Victoria first began to read the
printed page. None of the great
writers-Thackeray, Dickens, Bulwer-
Lytton, Tennyson, George Elliot, the
Brownings and others whose names
have cast glory over her country
during the past half or two-thirds of a
century-had yet begun to work.
Darwin, whose labors have revolu-
tionized science and have profoundly
affected the thoughts of moralists
and theologians, was not heard of.
At the time OF Victoria's birth the
tramp of Bonaparte's armies had just
ceased to shake the world, and Bona
part himself was prisoner on British
island in the South Atlantic. She has
seen every throne in Europe vacated
many times. She has seen her own
country transformed politically from
an oligarchy, in which only one out OF
fifty of the population was permitted
to vote, into a democracy in which the
voters number one out of six Of the
inhabitants. France has changed its
form of government four times since
her early girlhood days. Italy, then
only Typographical expression" to
use Metternich's phrase, has since be-
come one of the greatest powers OF
Europe, while the empire of Germany
was still far in the future.
The United States was in the midst
of the "era of good feeling" when Vic.
toria was born. Monroe has had
10 successors in the presidency since
that time. This country had only
100000 population then. Buffalo and
Pittsburg were frontier towns, and not
a house existed on the site of the mag
nificent metropolis of the west, Chicago.
The annexation of Florida, Texas,
New Mexico, California and Alaska,
to say nothing of the more recent ac-
cession of territory, all came since
Victoria's birth. The worlds map
has been changed in many places the
worlds ideals have been altered in
many respect, and the face of human
society has been transformed in four
score years which have elapsed since
Britain's queen first saw the light.