dignitaries of her realm, escorted by a glittering galaxy of
kings and princes, drove through the crowded enthusiasm of the capital
to render thanks to God in Westminster Abbey. In that triumphant hour
the last remaining traces of past antipathies and past disagreements
were altogether swept away. The Queen was hailed at once as the mother
of her people and as the embodied symbol of their imperial greatness;
and she responded to the double sentiment with all the ardour of her
spirit. England and the people of England, she knew it, she felt it,
were, in some wonderful and yet quite simple manner, hers. Exultation,
affection, gratitude, a profound sense of obligation, an unbounded
pride--such were her emotions; and, colouring and intensifying the
rest, there was something else. At last, after so long,
happiness--fragmentary, perhaps, and charged with gravity, but true
and unmistakable none the less--had returned to her. The unaccustomed
feeling filled and warmed her consciousness. When, at Buckingham Palace
again, the long ceremony over, she was asked how she was, "I am very
tired, but very happy," she said.

III

And so, after the toils and tempests of the day, a long evening
followed--mild, serene, and lighted with a golden glory. For an
unexampled atmosphere of success and adoration invested the last period
of Victoria's life. Her triumph was the summary, the crown, of a greater
triumph--the culminating prosperity of a nation. The solid splendour of
the decade between Victoria's two jubilees can hardly be paralleled in
the annals of England. The sage counsels of Lord Salisbury seemed to
bring with them not only wealth and power, but security; and the country
settled down, with calm assurance, to the enjoyment of an established
grandeur. And--it was only natural--Victoria settled down too. For
she was a part of the establishment--an essential part as it seemed--a
fixture--a magnificent, immovable sideboard in the huge saloon of
state. Without her the heaped-up banquet of 1890 would have lost
its distinctive quality--the comfortable order of the substantial
unambiguous dishes, with their background of weighty glamour, half out
of sight.

Her own existence came to harmonise more and more with what was around
her. Gradually, imperceptibly, Albert receded. It was not that he was
forgotten--that would have been impossible--but that the void created
by his absence grew less agonising, and even, at last, less obvious.
At l