there was little in the character of the king or the state of the
country to justify these festivities. England was then in the throes of
its struggle with Napoleon; the king had lost his reason, the Prince of
Wales acting as regent; the only reason for rejoicing was that the
inglorious career of George III. seemed nearing its end. Yet he survived
for ten years more, not dying until 1820, and surpassing all
predecessors in the length of his reign.

When, in the year 1887, Queen Victoria reached the fiftieth year of her
reign, there were none of these causes for sorrow in her realm. England
was in the height of prosperity, free from the results of blighting
pestilence, disastrous wars, desolating famine, or any of the horrors
that steep great nations in heart-breaking sorrow. The empire was
immense in extent, prosperous in all its parts, and the queen was
beloved throughout her wide dominions as no monarch of England had ever
been before. Thus it was a year in which the people could rejoice
without a shadow to darken their joy and with warm love for their queen
to make their hilarity a real instead of a simulated one.

It was in far-off India, of which Victoria had been proclaimed empress
ten years before, that the first note of rejoicing was heard. The 16th
of February was selected as the date of the imperial festival, which was
celebrated all over the land, even in Mandalay, the capital of the
newly-conquered state of Upper Burmah. Europeans and natives alike took
part in the ceremonies and rejoicings, which embraced banquets, plays,
reviews, illuminations, the distribution of honors, the opening in honor
of the empress of libraries, colleges and hospitals, and at Gwalior the
cancelling of the arrears of the land-tax amounting to five million
dollars.

The fiftieth year of the queen's reign would be completed on the 20th of
June, but in the preceding months of the year many preliminary
ceremonies took place in England. Among these was a splendid reception
of the queen at Birmingham, which city she visited on the 23d of March.
The streets were richly decorated with flags, festoons, triumphal
arches, banks of flowers, and trophies illustrating the industries of
that metropolis of manufacture, while the streets were thronged with
half a million of rejoicing people. A striking feature of the occasion
was a semi-circle of fifteen thousand school-children, a mile long, the
teachers standing behind each school-group, and a