=Source.=—Lord Beaconsfield’s _Sybil_, bk. i., chap. vi.
Hark! 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 a voice that told the maiden that 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 toiled in secret cabinets,
who have encountered in battle the hosts of Europe, 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 the 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, kneeling before her, pledge their troth, and take the
sacred oaths of allegiance and supremacy.
Allegiance to one who rules over the land that the great Macedonian
could not conquer; and over a continent of which even Columbus never
dreamed: to the Queen of every sea, and of nations in every zone.
It is not of these that I would speak; but of a nation nearer her
footstool, 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?