te, once for all, the
type of teaching given to the troops throughout this campaign:--

"I bowed down mourning as one that bewaileth his mother."
--Ps. xxxv. 14 (R.V.).

As there is no relationship on earth so imperishably true and tender
as that between a mother and her children, so also there is no
mourning on earth so real and reverent as that beside a mother's
grave. This saying therefore of the Psalmist describes with exquisite
exactness our common attitude to-day; and voices, as scarcely any
other single sentence could, our profoundest thought and feeling. We
behold at this hour a many peopled empire bowed down mourning; and
almost all other nations sharing in our sorrows; but it is not over
the death of a mere monarch, however mighty, the whole earth thus
feels moved to unfeigned lamentation.

I. _It is the death of the representative_ MOTHER _of our race and age
that bids us wrap our mourning robes around us._ For any record of
such another we ransack in vain the treasure stores of all history.
She is the only mother that ever reigned in her own right over any
potent realm; and certainly over our own. Queen Mary of unhappy
memory, died childless, and her more fortunate sister, "Good Queen
Bess," went down to her grave a maiden queen; but in the case of
Victoria, four sons and five daughters found their earliest cradle in
her queenly arms. She is said to have been in almost all respects as
capable as the ablest of her predecessors, and was even to extreme old
age unsparingly devoted to the discharge of her royal duties. Yet not
by reason of her laboriousness, her linguistic gifts, or gifts of
statesmanship will she be longest and most lovingly remembered. Put
it on record, as her chief glory, that in her own person she honoured
family life and kept it pure, when for generations such pureness had
seldom been suffered to show its face. Her most popular portraits
represent her as the centre of a group of her own children,
grandchildren and great-grandchildren--a chain of living royalties
reaching to the fourth generation. It was never so seen in Israel
before; and thus have been linked to the throne of England by potent
blood bonds almost all the Protestant royalties of Europe. The Queen
retained to the last a heart that was young, because to the last she
lived in tenderest relationship to the young. I cannot therefore even
imagine a more beautifully appropriate or suggestive message than that
by which the n