to Establishments, and, by rendering the privileges of the Church compatible with the civil freedom of all sects, confers strength upon and adds duration to that wise and magnificent institution.  And then this youthful Monarch, profoundly but wisely religious, disdaining hypocrisy, and far above the childish follies of false piety, casts herself upon God, and seeks from the Gospel of His blessed Son a path for her steps and a comfort for her soul.  Here is a picture which warms every English heart, and would bring all this congregation upon their bended knees to pray it may be realized.  What limits to the glory and happiness of the native land if the Creator should in His mercy have placed in the heart of this royal woman the rudiments of wisdom and mercy?  And if, giving them time to expand, and to bless our children’s children with her goodness, He should grant to her a long sojourning upon earth, and leave her to reign over us till she is well stricken in years, what glory! what happiness! what joy! what bounty of God!  I of course can only expect to see the beginning of such a splendid period; but when I do see it I shall exclaim with the pious Simeon—­’Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.’”

As respects the avoidance of war, the event has hardly accorded with the aspiration.  It is melancholy to recall the idealist enthusiasms which preceded the Exhibition of 1851, and to contrast them with the realities of the present hour.  Then the arts of industry and the competitions of peace were to supplant for ever the science of bloodshed.  Nations were to beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, and men were not to learn war any more.  And this was on the eve of the Crimea—­the most ruinous, the most cruel, and the least justifiable of all campaigns.  In one corner of the world or another, the war-drum has throbbed almost without intermission from that day to this.

But when we turn to other aspirations the retrospect is more cheerful.  Slavery has been entirely abolished, and, with all due respect to Mr. George Curzon, is not going to be re-established under the British flag.  The punishment of death, rendered infinitely more impressive, and therefore more deterrent, by its withdrawal from the public gaze, is reserved for offences which even Romilly would not have condoned.  The diminution of crime is an acknowledged fact.  Better laws and improved institutions—­judicial, political, social, sanitary—­we flatter ourselves that we may claim.  National Education dates from 1870, and its operation during a quarter of a century has changed the face of the industrial world.  Queen Victoria in her later years reigns over an educated people.