it tolls! All is over. The great bell of the metropolitan
cathedral announces the death of the last son of George the Third who
probably will ever reign in England. He was a good man: with feelings
and sympathies; deficient in culture rather than ability; with a sense
of duty; and with something of the conception of what should be the
character of an English monarch. Peace to his manes! We are summoned to
a different scene.

In a palace in a garden--not in a haughty keep, proud with the fame,
but dark with the violence of ages; not in a regal pile, bright with the
splendour, but soiled with the intrigues, of courts and factions--in
a palace in a garden, meet scene for youth, and innocence, and
beauty--came the voice that told the maiden she must ascend her throne!

The council of England is summoned for the first time within her bowers.
There are assembled the prelates and captains and chief men of her
realm; the priests of the religion that consoles, the heroes of the
sword that has conquered, the votaries of the craft that has decided the
fate of empires; men grey with thought, and fame, and age; who are the
stewards of divine mysteries, who have encountered in battle the hosts
of Europe, who have toiled in secret cabinets, who have struggled in the
less merciful strife of aspiring senates; men too, some of them, lords
of a thousand vassals and chief proprietors of provinces, yet not one of
them whose heart does not at this moment tremble as he awaits the first
presence of the maiden who must now ascend her throne.

A hum of half-suppressed conversation which would attempt to conceal the
excitement, which some of the greatest of them have since acknowledged,
fills that brilliant assemblage; that sea of plumes, and glittering
stars, and gorgeous dresses. Hush! the portals open; She comes! The
silence is as deep as that of a noontide forest. Attended for a moment
by her royal mother and the ladies of her court, who bow and then
retire, VICTORIA ascends her throne; a girl, alone, and for the first
time, amid an assemblage of men.

In a sweet and thrilling voice, and with a composed mien which indicates
rather the absorbing sense of august duty than an absence of emotion,
THE QUEEN announces her accession to the throne of her ancestors, and
her humble hope that divine providence will guard over the fulfilment of
her lofty trust.

The prelates and captains and chief men of her realm then advance to the
throne, and kne