Queen Victoria

n order to escape from his wife's scolding tongue. Here he meets the spectre crew of Captain Hudson, and, after partaking of their hospitality, falls into a deep sleep which lasts for twenty year

a stranger in

taken place in this country of ours; to try to understand clearly why the reign of a great Queen should have left its

Yes," and given very good reasons for his answer. It was not for nothing that the English almost worshipped their Queen in "those spac

me t

rthy p

er sexe dot

en, soldiers, and people all united in servin

as mean, even miserly, when money was wanted for men or ships; she was excess

iling courage and strength of mind, and she made the Crown respected, feared, and loved as no other rule

s were swept clear of foreign foes, and her country took its place in the front rank of Great Powers. Hers

gland still a mighty Power, it is true, scarcely yet recovered from the long war against Napoleon, with Nelson and Wellington enthroned as the national heroes. B

ar from being the England we know now. In 1836 appeared the first number of Mr Pickwick's travels. The Pickwick Papers is not a g

in the depths of coal-pits, and amid the clang and roar of machinery. It was a hard, cruel age. No longer did the people look up to and reverence their monarch as their leader. England had yet to pass through a long and bitter period of 'strife and stress,' of war between rich and poor

the spinning-wheel industry and reduced the price of cloth; the price of corn had risen, and, after the close of the great war, ot

st Council at K

A. Manse

efly the reform of a Parliament which no longer represented the people's wishes. Consider

the abolition of the 'taxes on knowledge,' by which was meant the stamp duty of fourpence on every copy of a newspaper, a duty of threepence on every pound of paper, and a heavy tax upon advertiseme

ainted vividly for us by Carlyle when he speaks of "half a million handloom weavers, working 15 hours a day, in perpetual inability to procure thereby enough of the coarsest food; Scotch farm-labourers, who

n she ascended the throne, a yo