f a nation nearer her
footstool, and which at this moment looks to her with anxiety, with
affection, perhaps with hope. Fair and serene, she has the blood and
beauty of the Saxon. Will it be her proud destiny at length to bear
relief to suffering millions, and with that soft hand which might
inspire troubadours and guerdon knights, break the last links in the
chain of Saxon thraldom?"

To-day, with pride and thankfulness, chastened though it be by our sense
of national shortcomings, we can answer _Yes_ to this wistful question
of genius and humanity. We have seen the regulation of dangerous labour,
the protection of women and children from excessive toil, the removal
of the tax on bread, the establishment of a system of national
education; and in Macaulay's phrase, a point which yesterday was
invisible is our goal to-day, and will be our starting-post to-morrow.

Her Majesty ascended the throne on the 20th of June 1837, and on the
29th the _Times_ published a delightfully characteristic article against
the Whig Ministers, "into whose hands the all but infant and helpless
Queen has been compelled by her unhappy condition to deliver up herself
and her indignant people." Bating one word, this might be an extract
from an article on the formation of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule
Government. Surely the consistency of the _Times_ in evil-speaking is
one of the most precious of our national possessions: On the 30th of
June the Royal Assent was given by commission to forty Bills--the first
Bills which became law in the Queen's reign; and, the clerks in the
House of Lords having been accustomed ever since the days of Queen Anne
to say "his Majesty" and "Le Roy le veult," there was hopeless bungling
over the feminine appellations, now after 130 years revived. However,
the Bills scrambled through somehow, and among them was the Act which
abolished the pillory--an auspicious commencement of a humane and
reforming reign. On the 8th of July came the rather belated burial of
William IV. at Windsor, and on the 11th the newly completed Buckingham
Palace was occupied for the first time, the Queen and the Duchess of
Kent moving thither from Kensington.

On the 17th of July, Parliament was prorogued by the Queen in person.
Her Majesty's first Speech from the Throne referred to friendly
relations with Foreign Powers, the diminution of capital punishment, and
"discreet improvements in ecclesiastical institutions." It was read in a
clear and mu