One hundred and one yeats ago today a brilliant assembly in Westminster Abbey saw the coronation of Queen Victoria. She had as-conded the throne the previous year, and all Britons were wondering what manner of Queen this young woman would make. There were aspects about the early years of her reign which might have made her contemporaries doubt whether she would leave the Throne any the stronger for her occupancy, and yet as those years which have been portrayed so tellingly in "Sixty Glorious Years" passed, the woman, about whom there' was so much doubt, proved herself the finest Briti Queen in history, and established her family in the hearts of her people so strongly that it would require much now to shake the affection and loyalty with which it is regarded. The brilliance of the coronation festivities was such that Sarim Effendi, the Turkish Ambassador was utterly bewildered. It is reported of him that he was quite unable to walk to his place in the Abbey but stood as if he had lost his senses and kept muttering "All this for a woman." Ascending the throne when the popular faith in kings and queen was definitely on the decline, in the long years during which she served her people she revived that faith, she consolidated her throne, and not only captivated the affections of the multitude, but won the respect of thoughtful men, and all that by methods which to her predecessors would have seemed impracticable, methods which it required no less shrewdness to discover than force of character and honesty of heart to adopt steadfastly. The century that. has elapsed since she was crowned has been an important one in the history of the Empire. It saw the birth of the present Commonwealth and that growth in strength with which it was possible to face the vicissitudes of the early part of this century. The foundations which were laid are sound, still as sound as they were when they were first conceived, and that th so is due to the greatness of a Queen whom all men delighted to serve.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.