Great Britain and Her Queen | Page 7

by means of
electric currents transmitted through metallic circuits. Submarine
telegraphy lay undreamed of in the future, land telegraphy was but just
gaining hearing as a practicable improvement, when the crown was set
on Her Majesty's head amid all that pomp and ceremony at
Westminster. A modern English imagination is quite unequal to the
task of realising the manifold hindrances that beset human intercourse
at that day, when a journey by coach between places as important and
as little remote from each other as Leeds and Newcastle occupied
sixteen mortal hours, with changes of horses and stoppages for meals
on the road, and when letters, unless forwarded by an "express"
messenger at heavy cost, tarried longer on the way than even did
passengers; while some prudent dwellers in the country deemed it well
to set their affairs in order and make their wills before embarking on
the untried perils of a journey up to town. These days are well within
the memory of many yet living; but if the newer generations that have
arisen during the present reign would understand what it is to be
hampered in their movements and their correspondence as were their
fathers, they must seek the remoter and more savage quarters of Europe,
the less travelled portions of America or of half-explored Australia;
they must plunge into Asian or African wilds, untouched by civilisation,
where as yet there runs not the iron horse, worker of greater marvels
than the wizard steeds of fairy fable, that could, transport a single
favoured rider over wide distances in little time. The subjugated,
serviceable nature-power Steam, with its fellow-servant the tamed and
tutored Lightning, has wonderfully contracted distance during these
fifty years, making the earth, once so vast to human imagination,
appear as a globe shrunken to a tenth of its ancient size, and bringing
nations divided by half the surface of that globe almost within sound of
each other's speech.
[Illustration: Wheatstone.]

That there is damage as well as profit in all these increased facilities of
intercourse must be apparent, since there is evil as well as good in the
human world, and increased freedom of communication implies freer
communication of the evil as of the good. But we may well hope that
the cause of true upward progress will be most served by the vast
inevitable changes which, as they draw all peoples nearer together,
must deepen and strengthen the sense of human brotherhood, and, as
they bring the deeds of all within the knowledge of all, must consume
by an intolerable blaze of light the once secret iniquities and
oppressions abhorrent to the universal conscience of mankind. The
public conscience in these realms at least is better informed and more
sensitive than it was in the year of William IV's death and of Victoria's
accession.
CHAPTER II.
STORM AND SUNSHINE.
[Illustration: St. James's Palace.]
The beneficent changes we have briefly described were but just
inaugurated, and their possible power for good was as yet hardly
divined, when the young Queen entered into that marriage which we
may well deem the happiest action of her life, and the most fruitful of
good to her people, looking to the extraordinary character of the
husband of her choice, and to the unobtrusive but always advantageous
influence which his great and wise spirit exercised on our national life.
The marriage had been anxiously desired, and the way for it judiciously
prepared, but it was in no sense forced on either of the contracting
parties by their elders who so desired it. Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg,
second son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the Queen's maternal
uncle, was nearly of an age with his royal cousin; he had already,
young as he was, given evidence of a rare superiority of nature; he had
been excellently trained; and there is no doubt that Leopold, king of the
Belgians, his uncle, and the Queen's, did most earnestly desire to see
the young heiress of the British throne, for whom he had a peculiar

tenderness, united to the one person whose position and whose
character combined to point him out as the fit partner for her high and
difficult destinies. What tact, what patience, and what power of
self-suppression the Queen of England's husband would need to
exercise, no one could better judge than Leopold, the widowed husband
of Princess Charlotte; no one could more fully have exemplified these
qualities than the prince in whom Leopold's penetration divined them.
The cousins had already met, in 1836, when their mutual attraction had
been sufficiently strong; and in 1839, when Prince Albert, with his
elder brother Ernest, was again visiting England, the impression
already produced became ineffaceably deep. The Queen, whom her
great rank compelled to take the initiative, was not very long in making
up her mind when