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school was to share! A whole holiday at Silcoates in mid-term was a rare, almost unprecedented event, a boon from the gods not to be credited easily or spoken of lightly. Not only were there to be no lessons all day, not even preparation at night; but the boys were to go to town to see the procession, to admire the decorations, and possibly although this was hardly to be hoped for-to see the illuminations. I think we made more fuss in anticipation over the Prince's wedding than ten years after I made about my own. The Sea King's daughter from over the sea was the universal heroine. Her beauty, her simplicity, her goodness all helped to idealise her to an extent somewhat overshadowing the bridegroom. When the eventful day came and the joy bells pealed from the steeple, the streets were filled with eager multitudes, of whom there was no one more eager and keen than I. It was the first great popular function at which I had ever taken part even as a spectator. It was all so wonderfully novel, so strange, so thrilling. Not even the marvellous spectacle of the Abbey on Jubilee day, when the Queen and all her children knelt in thanksgiving before Almighty God in the presence of all the notables of the Empire, affected me so much as the humble attempt at decoration and the simple procession through the streets of Wakefield twenty-one years before. It was a somewhat dreary day. But what matters mud under foot, when the mind of youth soars on high amid the stars musing on thrones where princes sit and palaces where beauteous princesses await their lords! It was a day of intense delight, delight which culminated when the volunteers fired a feu de joie. It was but a sputtering and irregular volley of blank cartridges, but what memories did the flashing muzzles and the smell of powder arouse in the boyish mind! They were but Wakefield Volunteers firing a feu de joie, but they represented the whole British Army to me, and in the rolling volley I heard echoes of Hougoumont, and saw again the fire-fringed line before which Napoleon's cuirassiers recoiled smitten and broken into irremediable ruin. Then at night the illuminations were to me marvellous exceedingly, with the blazing gas jets festooned into Prince of Wales's feathers, or running like a fringe of lambent light to the very summit of the lofty spire. Even now, after the lapse of thirty-three years, I can feel my pulse beat faster at the memory of that great day, with its bonfires and its bands, its banners and the roar of saluting cannon. It was a royal day indeed, worthy to be ever remembered for holiday and festive sport, still gleaming bright across the years with a radiance that nothing can extinguish. Thus the work went on-grief and joy, death and love, weaving together ever closer and closer the Nation and the Family at its head. Funeral cars and wedding coaches were alike but shuttles in the hands of the Master Weaver. Whether the thread was white or black, the work of the loom went on.

Then for a period the Crown of England went into eclipse. The retirement of the Queen from the ceremonial of the Court and from all but the indispensable duties. of her position, led after a few years had passed to the circulation of malicious rumours not to be repeated here. The nation, escaping from the spell of Lord Palmerston's long ascendency, began to bestir itself. When the disfranchised million clamoured for their admission within the pale of the Constitution, there was scant leisure for noting the grace or the gilding of the Royal Coat-of-Arms that towered aloft. The Queen by necessity of her position took no public part for or against Reform. When Hyde Park railings went down, there were many who regarded their fall as a portent foreshadowing the speedy overthrow of much more ancient institutions. When Disraeli, placed in power by the party opposed to a moderate reform, dished the Whigs by carrying household suffrage, there were few who did not feel that we were within a measurable distance of an orderly and rapid revolution. The recently published letters of Archbishop Magee have reminded us of the lugubrious forebodings with which the sudden triumph of the Radical Reformers filled the heart of many an acute

observer. The enfranchisement of the working classes was followed by the return of Mr. Gladstone to power with a majority of more than a hundred. The Conservatives beheld with pious horror the axe of the Reformer laid at the root of the Irish Church, the Irish Land System, University Tests, and Purchase in the Army. National Education was taken in hand; the House of Peers was openly threatened. The old Monarchy itself seemed likely in no short time to be the object of attack.

It was, I think, some time in the earlier sixties that I saw a picture which imperceptibly softened the somewhat fanatical Republicanism of my youth. Boys are

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precocious Jacobins in their way, or Jacobites, as the fit seizes them, and to those who have nurtured themselves upon the Republicanism of Plutarch, of Cromwell, of Washington, and the Revolutionists of the Continent, there seemed something resembling a sacrifice of sound principle even in so innocent a thing as the singing of "God save the Queen." But in my early teens there came for exhibition in Newcastle-on-Tyne a well-known picture by Mr. Jones Barker, "The Secret of England's Greatness." Up to this time I had never been in a picture gallery. I had never seen an oil painting, except in shop windows, and a few landscapes of more or less doubtful quality in our village home. Those who are brought up within a stone's throw of Galleries of the

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THE BIBLE: THE SECRET OF ENGLAND'S GREATNESS. (Painted by Thomas Jones Barker. Engraved by W. H. Simmons.)

Fine Arts and Picture Exhibitions of all kinds, little realise what the first striking picture is on an impressionable youth. The attraction of Barker's canvas for the secluded Puritans of the North was its subject. All our culture was Hebraic. The Bible was our literature, our lawgiver, the guide of daily life and the storehouse of political and social wisdom. There were family prayers morning and evening, the chapter to be read privately every day, two week-night services to be punctually attended, while the whole of Sunday was filled up with a series of Sunday-schools, sermons, prayer meetings, and Bible classes. To this saturation in the Hebrew Scriptures was due somewhat of the austerity with which we regarded the Kingship. Whatever texts there were about honouring the King, the whole drift of the sacred volume, as we were taught it, went against kingship, priestcraft, and every institution that came between the individual man and the Infinite personal God. "I gave them a king in my wrath," seemed to come very near to a brand of the Divine displeasure on the Monarchy, and I do not remember ever so much as entertaining even a passing doubt that we should have made a long stride towards establishing the Kingdom of God and His righteousness if Britain were to be restored to the primitive simplicity of Republican institutions.

Into this household, so trained and inspired with supreme reverence for the Divine Book, there came the news one day that a wonderful picture by a great artist was on exhibition at Mr. Turner's Fine Art Gallery in Grey Street, in which the Queen was represented as doing homage to the Bible. To us, in the ardour of our juvenile republicanism, it seemed that the logical consequence of any real homage to the Bible would have been for Her Majesty to step down from the throne and out from the Monarchy, terminating once for all the institution of the Kingship. But although she halted short of that ultimate, it was a sign of grace that she should recognise the Book. So mustering up our pence into the coveted shilling, we went to see "The Secret of England's Greatness." Most people have seen the picture, which represents an incident in the reception of some native chief by the Queen. The swarthy Africanhighly idealised, I fear-flashing with gems and picturesque in his native garb, bows low before a youthful queen-resplendent in white satin, if I remember right-who advancing to meet the inquiring savage, presents him with a copy of the Bible as the answer to his question. "What is the secret of England's greatness?" In the background, I think, were the Ministers and the Family. All that I remember distinctly is the dusky envoy, with the flashing eye and upturned face, and the white Queen with the sacred Book. The picture stood all by itself in a gallery in which it was not elbowed or profaned by meaner pictures. It was as if Art had solemnly revealed the Monarchy in loyal obeisance before the Book.*

The painting made a great impression on me, and not on me only. I am afraid that I got horribly bored with "The Secret of England's Greatness" before the picture left Newcastle. How often have I not heard that incident described from the pulpit, from the platform, in Sunday-school! It struck the imagination of the common people, this tribute of earthly Majesty to God's word. Rude coalheavers, with but an imperfect grasp even of the vigorous vernacular of Tyneside, used to tell over and over again how

Alas! I have been informed by several correspondents that the incident which suggested the painting of "The Secret of England's Greatness" is as apochryphal as the apple story of William Tell. The late Sir Henry Ponsonby is credited with a letter briefly stating in reply to an inquiry as to whe the famous incident took place, that it never took place at all. The historical accuracy of the suggestion which set the artist's brush in motion is, however, comparatively unimportant. It was accepted as authentic history by many thousands at the time, and its effect on our minds is historical even if the episode is purely mythical.

the Queen had given the Book of Books, the Book of our Salvation, to the heathen from afar who sought to know what it was made England great. And so, dimly and half consciously, I began to gain a glimmering of the uses of the Sovereign as Grand Certificator for the truth and excellence of that which is best worth holding by in Church and in State. In the delight of the uncultured artizans and labourers of my native village over the Queen's act in giving the Bible to the savage lay the germ of the sentiment which in its full development proclaims the Queen Fidei Defensor, and regards even the Christian Church itself as somewhat wanting in the necessary credentials until it is surmounted by the royal arms, and certified to be the Church of England as by law established under the sign manual of the Queen. But all that was mercifully hidden from our eyes in those days. Had it been otherwise, I fear Jones Barker's picture would have been regarded as a wolf masquerading in sheep's clothing, a dangerous and damnable heresy in paint invented to lure our Nonconformist souls from the strait and narrow path trodden by those who bore stern testimony against the Erastianism of the Establishment and the foul and adulterous union of Church and State.

During the sixties I passed through my teens. I attained my majority a few days before the declaration of war against Prussia, which revolutionised the map of Europe, destroyed the French Empire, and established the Third Republic. So far as I may be regarded as a sample unit of the millions of undistinguished subjects of Her Majesty, the Crown had distinctly lost ground since the Prince's marriage. The death of the Prince Consort, the retreat of the Queen, the reports widely current as to the selfindulgent habits of the Prince of Wales, had effaced much of the good impression that had been produced between 1850 and 1861. People said frankly that the Monarchy was safe enough as long as the Queen lived, but that "as for that young man, England would never tolerate another Charles the Second or Prince Regent." The Prince was believed to admire the fast life that was the rule at Paris in the closing days of the Third Empire. Tomahawk published a cartoon representing the Prince as Hamlet, exclaiming to the ghost of George IV., "Nay, I'll follow thee." The popularity of the Princess of Wales tended to swell the reaction against her husband. And all the while the Queen moodily meditated in her Highland retreat over her irreparable loss.

The rehabilitation of monarchy in Britain, which has been one of the most remarkable features of the last quarter of a century, is due to a variety of causes, most of which are obvious enough. First and foremost there was the superb example furnished by the German armies of the efficiency and economy of a system in its essence monarchial. English sympathy was unmistakably with the Germans against the French, and although certain weaklings changed sides after Sedan, the nation as a whole was profoundly impressed by the magnificent spectacle of German loyalty and German discipline, as contrasted with the immeasurable corruption, treachery, and inefficiency of the French, who, although under the Empire, were essentially democratic. For a little while it was possible that the French Republic might, by raising again the old flag of the Revolution, evoke the potent passions which in 1848 shook Europe to its centre. The expectation was disappointed. Garibaldi took the field as an ally of the Republic, but his countrymen occupied Rome in virtual alliance with Germany, and that was all. All hope from that quarter was dashed to the ground by the mad outbreak of the Commune. Paris, after 1871, was no longer the storm centre of Europe. The Republic was only a Republic in name. It was controlled by men who detested every idea that had made Republicanism the ideal of our youth. The glamour was gone. Judged by the supreme test of wager of battle, the ideas of our modern democrats had been

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