have been the man who could maintain it throughout the varied contingencies of more than twenty years! And those, too, the years during which, in the case of most men, the passions are strongest, and the judgment not yet matured; and during which, therefore, the temptation to break through such stringent rules must have been often strong. For it is always to be borne in mind that the Prince died at forty-two: seldom has any man gained such a reputation for sagacity and prudence at so early an age. It is no disparagement to the living to say that the glory and the happiness of the reign of our Queen has been owing, in no small degree, to the line of conduct so faithfully observed by the Prince. Why then his unpopularity? It arose, so far as it really existed, from various causes. The English people are not generous to strangers; they cannot comprehend any difference from their own tastes and habits; they even resent such difference. Hence their foolish dislike to foreigners as a rule; a dislike not easily overcome by any individual foreigner. Moreover, by a certain section of the aristocracy, Prince Albert was with reason disliked,-by those, namely, who regretted the license of previous Courts. Even such a feeling as this (the motive being unknown) had some effect on the public, increasing the prejudice against the Prince. But at the worst, his unpopularity with the body of the people was never more than temporary. It was only roused at times of strong political excitement-such as the outbreak of the Crimean War-when the public were misled into some ridiculous belief that the influence of the Prince was opposed to the wishes of the nation. And it has long passed away : 'Now thy brows are cold We see thee what thou art, and know Thy kindred with the great of old.' Years ago, Perthès foretold that the Prince was sure to become the idol of the English nation, silently to influence the English aristocracy, and deeply to affect the destinies of Europe.' Doubtless the English nation now cherishes his memory with a grateful affection; probably, had he lived longer his influence as an able and trusted statesman would have greatly affected Europe; what he has done for the English aristocracy we cannot tell; but we do know what he has done for the English monarchy. It is startling to reflect---and it would be well did those in high places reflect often and seriously-on the change which has taken place within the last seventy years in the feelings of the English people towards the monarchy. We are loyal as ever, when a Sovereign-like the present-justly commands our loyalty; nay, we are even more so; for our loyalty is founded upon rational conviction and regard. But loyalty, as an unreasoning instinct, has passed away. It is not too much to say that it would be hard for a king like George IV. again to reign in this country. Prince Albert saw and understood this change. He rendered no slight assistance to our gracious Sovereign in resting the throne upon new and more lasting foundations. On these foundations-rectitude of life, earnestness of purpose, self-denying pursuit of duty-the throne will stand firm; but should their support be withdrawn, the days of the monarchy will be evil, and, it may be, few. In concluding this notice, necessarily hasty and imperfect, we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of recalling to our readers the words with which Mr. Thackeray closed his 'Roundabout Paper' for December 1862-words which, when first written, came home to our hearts with a great power of appealing, and which we now know, as we then believed, to be not more pathetically beautiful than strictly true: 'Wise, just, moderate, admirably pure of life, the friend of science, of freedom, of peace and all peaceful arts, the Consort of the Queen passes from our troubled sphere to that serene one where justice and peace reign eternal. At a moment of awful doubt, and, it may be, danger, Heaven calls away from the wife's, the Sovereign's side, her dearest friend and counsellor. But he leaves that throne and its widowed mistress to the guardianship of a great people, whose affectionate respect her life has long since earned, whose best sympathies attend her grief, and whose best strength and love and loyalty will defend her honour.' The nation sympathizes with the loss of the counsellor; it sympathizes yet more deeply with the loss of the husband and the friend. Nothing lies so close to the hearts of the English people as a reverence for domestic happiness. And when they know that those of the highest station in the land have enjoyed this happiness as truly as it can be enjoyed by any, their feelings are stirred with a vehemence of sympathy strange to the usually impassive English nature. Perhaps the greatest merit of this book consists in the simple frankness of its appeal to this feeling: one touch of nature makes the whole world kin; and never was Sovereign made kin with her subjects by a purer and truer touch of nature than is here. It is this,' said Lord Melbourne at the first, which has made your Majesty's marriage popular, that they know it is not for mere State reasons; and so it continued to the end. The people knew that their Queen enjoyed that felicity which is immeasurably above all ambition, more precious than wealth, more noble than name. He knows not life who knows not that; he hath not felt the highest faculty of the soul who hath not enjoyed it.' And as by the publication of this book a fuller knowledge has been given, so a heartier sympathy will be yielded. Whatever of public duties can be performed by the Sovereign only, the Sovereign, we feel assured, will continue to discharge. But in the face of the greatness of the loss which this volume makes clear to us, and of the reality of sorrow which every page reveals, who could join in the cry (let this brief notice suffice for a topic so distasteful) that such grief should be disturbed by idle gaieties for the amusement of a frivolous aristocracy? ART. VIII. The Achievements and the Moral of 1867. THE year 1867 will always be memorable in British history, both for what it has done and for what it has revealed. It has witnessed a collapse of principle and a disintegration of party far beyond anything that has been seen in our own time or in our fathers', a weakness in what was considered strong, an instability in what was considered firm, a fluctuation in what was thought established, a melting away of what had been regarded as permanent and almost eternal, that are little short of bewildering. It is not so much that old landmarks have been removed, and new principles and modes of action have been avowed, and vast constitutional changes introduced, and political steps taken of enormous and uncalculated magnitude; but that these things have been done by some of the very last men we should have expected to do them, that they have been done, half unconsciously, half unintentionally, by most of the doers, in a manner in spite of themselves, and that they appear to have been done from no adequate motive, and under the pressure of no discernible or absolute necessity. People have drifted rather than been driven; they have groped and swayed about as in a sort of somnambulism; they have not succumbed to any irresistible force so much as yielded helplessly to some invisible, unintelligible, feeble fatality. We venture to affirm, that no one who opposed the Reform Bill of 1866, or introduced that of 1867, had the least anticipation of what the Reform Bill under which we shall elect our Parliament in 1868 would be; and even now we greatly question whether any one can predict with the least approach to accuracy what the operation and results of the new law will prove to be. All we know is, that statesmen and parties have curiously changed places, and appear to have changed views; that we have lived for six months as in the phantasmagoria of a dream, and have been treated to a series of dissolving views, so rapid and startling as nearly to take away our breath; that our confidence both in the wisdom and the integrity of public men has received a shock from which it will take years to recover; and that we no longer know where to look for guidance, or whence to expect resistance and stability. It is not too much to say, that the predominant feeling left on the minds of all thinking and observant men by the session of 1867 is one of mingled surprise, shame, mortification, and vague uneasiness, sometimes rising almost to dismay, when we look forward to the future ; and the impression is pretty nearly the same, whether the spectator be Liberal or Conservative in his opinions. No party can be proud of its conduct or its achievements, and none but the Radicals, and they only with misgiving, can rejoice at the result. Whigs and Tories have been alike shortsighted, unwise, unstable; blunders, in which morality has been as much in fault as intelligence, have been shared between them in nearly equal measure; partly in their blind hostility, partly in their common weariness, they have joined in a work which neither wished for, and which neither can in their heart approve. There has been nothing like it in our history so far as we can remember; certainly not in our recent history. The great conflicts of 1832 and 1846 had nothing in common with it. The former inaugurated a new political era, the latter a new commercial and financial policy; but the action in both cases was specific, deliberate, and designed. In 1832, the entire party of progress was arrayed against the entire party of resistance; the first knew what they wanted, the other what they feared; both parties stood to their guns to the end of the fiercest and most obstinate struggle of our day, and the Tories, เ Though vanquished, still retired with strife.' A sort of crisis in our national annals had arrived; abuses of all kinds had accumulated till the irritation and indignation they excited had become dangerous and mischievous, and the state of the representation was at once the worst of these abuses and the cause of most of them. The apparent were out of harmony with the real facts of our political condition; legislative supremacy no longer lay in the same classes which possessed the ultimate practical power; the constitutional garment of a former age had ceased to fit the altered circumstances of the time. A claim was put forth, the essential justice of which could not be gainsaid, and it was backed by a strength in the claimants that could not be withstood. The result of the change proposed was honestly, and might be intelligently, dreaded by those who regarded mainly all that was good in the past, and whose fancy exaggerated all that was perilous and uncertain in the future, and their predictions of ruin were scarcely more extravagant than the golden age anticipated by their adversaries. Still, both parties believed in their principles and in their prophecies; both fought out the fight gallantly and honourably, and there was nothing to tarnish either the victory of the one or the defeat of the other. Neither the conquered nor the conquerors had anything to be ashamed of: the first yielded to the rising tide, and the second rode into power upon it; but both parties came out of the conflict compact and unbroken, with their relative position unaltered and their cohesion unim |