Notwithstanding all her faults, she was the best beloved of all
English monarchs because of her never-failing courage and strength
of mind, and she made the Crown respected, feared, and loved as no
other ruler had done before her, and none other, save Queen Victoria,
has reigned as she did in her people's hearts.
She lived for her country, and her country's love and admiration were
her reward. During her reign the seas were swept clear of foreign
foes, and her country took its place in the front rank of Great Powers.
Hers was the Golden Age of Literature, of Adventure and Learning,
an age of great men and women, a New England.
If an Elizabethan Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep and awakened again
at the opening of Victoria's reign, more than 200 years later, what
would he have found? England 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. But the times
were bad in many ways, for it was "a time of ugliness: ugly religion,
ugly law, ugly relations between rich and poor, ugly clothes, ugly
furniture."
The England of that day, it must be remembered, was the England
described so faithfully in Charles Dickens' early works. It was far
from being the England we know now. In 1836 appeared the first number
of Mr Pickwick's travels. _The Pickwick Papers_ is not a great work
of humour merely, for in its pages we see England and the early
Victorians--a strange country to us--in which they lived.
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