girl, the wife, the aged woman, were the same:
vitality, conscientiousness, pride, and simplicity were hers to the
latest hour.

CHAPTER X. THE END

The evening had been golden; but, after all, the day was to close in
cloud and tempest. Imperial needs, imperial ambitions, involved the
country in the South African War. There were checks, reverses, bloody
disasters; for a moment the nation was shaken, and the public distresses
were felt with intimate solicitude by the Queen. But her spirit was
high, and neither her courage nor her confidence wavered for a moment.
Throwing her self heart and soul into the struggle, she laboured with
redoubled vigour, interested herself in every detail of the hostilities,
and sought by every means in her power to render service to the national
cause. In April 1900, when she was in her eighty-first year, she made
the extraordinary decision to abandon her annual visit to the South of
France, and to go instead to Ireland, which had provided a particularly
large number of recruits to the armies in the field. She stayed for
three weeks in Dublin, driving through the streets, in spite of the
warnings of her advisers, without an armed escort; and the visit was
a complete success. But, in the course of it, she began, for the first
time, to show signs of the fatigue of age.

For the long strain and the unceasing anxiety, brought by the war, made
themselves felt at last. Endowed by nature with a robust constitution,
Victoria, though in periods of depression she had sometimes supposed
herself an invalid, had in reality throughout her life enjoyed
remarkably good health. In her old age, she had suffered from a
rheumatic stiffness of the joints, which had necessitated the use of a
stick, and, eventually, a wheeled chair; but no other ailments attacked
her, until, in 1898, her eyesight began to be affected by incipient
cataract. After that, she found reading more and more difficult, though
she could still sign her name, and even, with some difficulty, write
letters. In the summer of 1900, however, more serious symptoms appeared.
Her memory, in whose strength and precision she had so long prided
herself, now sometimes deserted her; there was a tendency towards
aphasia; and, while no specific disease declared itself, by the autumn
there were unmistakable signs of a general physical decay. Yet, even
in these last months, the strain of iron held firm. The daily
work continued; nay, it actually increas