t aright, fear greatly to confront the future. Not to us the glory
or the praise, but to a merciful overruling Providence, ever raising
up amongst us noble hearts in time, that we are found to-day

"A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled,"

not quite bankrupt in heart or hope or faith, but possessing

"Some sense of duty, something of a faith,
Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made,
Some patient force to change them when we will;"

and we may justly acknowledge, in thankfulness not vainglorious, the
happier fate that has been ours above many another land, that may
still be ours, "if England to itself do rest but true."

We have seen during these sixty years the map of Europe remodelled to
an undreamed of extent. Fair Italy, though still possessing her fatal
gift of beauty, though still suffering many things, is no longer the
prey of foreign unloved rulers, but has become a nation, a mere
"geographical expression" no longer; Germany, whose many little
princedoms were once a favourite theme of British mockery, is now one
great and formidable empire; the power of Russia has, despite the
Crimean check, continued to expand, while desperate internal
struggles have shaken that half-developed people, proving fatal to
the gentle successor of Nicholas, the emancipator of the Russian
serfs, and often threatening the life of _his_ successors; and the
once formidable American slave-system has been swept away, with
appalling loss of human life; a second President of the United States
has fallen by the hand of an assassin; and new difficulties, scarce
inferior to those connected with slavery, have followed on its
abolition. Our record shows no calamity comparable to the greatest of
these, if we set aside the Indian horrors so terribly avenged at the
moment, but by their teaching resulting ultimately in good rather
than evil.

Besides the furious strife and convulsion that have rent other lands,
how inconsiderable seem the disturbances that disfigure our home
annals, how peaceful the changes in our constitutional system,
brought about orderly in due form of law, how purely domestic the
saddest events of our internal history! We wept with our Sovereign in
her early widowhood, a bereavement to the people as well as to the
Queen; we trembled with her when the shadow of death hung over her
eldest son, rejoicing with her when it passed away; we shared her
grief for two other of her children, i