Manchester, Dec. 21.
Twenty years ago, when Queen Victoria died, she had become a legend to her people. The criticism which had sometimes assailed her in her middle age had not only died away but had been so com-. pletely forgotten that such a thing had come to seem incredible. Her ego, her bereavements, her prestige, the enormous success of her reign in every material sense, all combined to lift her to an eminence where the voice of critical judgment was entirely stilled. Of her political activities practically nothing was known by the people as a whole. The bulk of the nation saw only the surface of things and respected and admired a venerable lady who for over 60 years had maintained the powers of England and the moral purity of her Court.
On these grounds Queen Victoria still deserves all admiration. There is no legend there, but in many other respects the information which has accumulated since 1902 has brought disillusionment. began even in 1903 with the publication of Morley's "Gladstone" which showed that when at last that great man, broken with age and labour in the service of his country, had to lay down the burden, even then Victoria had for him no word of gratitude for the faithful services of 53 years. When, four years later, Gladstone died there were messages of grief and mourning from all quarters of the arid such as had rarely been known in history, but when in 1894 he had his farewell audience of her, he himself recorded that "there was not a syllable on the past''—except a word of thanks for something done: long before for a member of her own royal family. Gladstone had been a model of loyalty and discretion; what he knew never became known during his lifetime to the masses of the - people who almost worshipped him, but since 1903 we have heard numerous acensations of the intensity of the Queen's partisanship in politics. As each succeeding biography of those who flourished under her is published—Disraeli, Salisbury. Dilke, and Wolseley—together with the researches of Sir Sidney Lee and Mr. Lytton Strachey another picture of Victoria has been presented. The legend disappears. Capable, strong-willed, of high moral character, she still remains, but she was also, by these judges, narrow in mind, with a strong sense of her own importance, a Jingo Imperialist in foreign politics, ready to defy the Constitution for what she believed to be right, utterly devoted to "favourite" Ministe¥$ like Melbourne and Disraeli, and an un. like Palmerston and Gladstone.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.