Queen Victoria's Jubilee
In "Historico-Biographies", sympathy was expressed for the Royal family on the death of the Duke of Albany, which occurred in 1884, whilst this local history was being written in weekly instalments for the St. Leonards Gazette; and now, in 1897, while the same is being revised for the chance of some sort of reissue, Queen Victoria has celebrated the sixtieth year of her reign. As Her Majesty's sojourn at St. Leonards when Princess Victoria has been fully described and other royal visits have been dwelt upon in foregoing chapters, a few remarks, suggested by the Queen's Diamond Jubilee may not be importune ere the revision of another chapter is entered upon. The time has been, even in the remembrance of the (illegible text) writer, when in Hastings the birthday and coronation-day anniversaries of George III and George IV would be made special occasions for public dinners, public balls and other demonstrations of rejoicing, but those were times when Hastings was a military — and to some extent a naval - rendezvous, and when it was necessary to encourage by every means the ardour and the loyalty of our fighting men. It was also a time when the means of recreation and amusement were neither so numerous nor so varied as they now are; and when, as a consequence, the sympathy for the monarch was less a consideration than the opportunity which was afforded for personal indulgence. If, therefore, we do not now parade our loyalty by means of dinners, balls, and other pastimes specially instituted for royal birth-days and coronation days, it is not because our attachment to the monarch is less sincere, but because our opportunities for showing it are more frequent, and, perhaps, more genuine. “Our virtuous and beloved Queen” is not a meaningless phrase, but a genuine sentiment, felt by the heart as expressed by the lips. We did not display the warmth of sentiment a fortnight ago, in We do not display the (illegible text) warmth of sentiment on recurrent anniversaries in the old manner of feasting and military parade, although her Majesty's birthday is not allowed to pass away without some recognition. There is at least the customary ringing of church bells, the firing a salute from the Town guns and the hoisting of flags on many a mast.
Queen Victoria is now in her 87th year, and for 60 years, has ruled over this empire. Sixty-three years have also passed since her Majesty and her mother came to reside at St. Leonards
Called to the responsibilities of a throne at the early age of eighteen, she has been Queen of England three years as a maiden, twenty-one as a wife, and Thirty six as a widow. The term of her sorrow, it will be seen, now almost equals that of the other two stages combined. From the time of her Majesty’s accession to the death of her mother the Duchess of Kent, nearly a quarter of a century elapsed, a period comprising the happiest time of her existence. Then began the series of trials to which the Queen so touchingly referred in her recent letter to her people.
Mother and husband were taken from her within a few months of each other, and in her maturer years she to had to bear the loss of two children who had attained to the ages of 35 and 31 respectively.
Comparing the world now with (illegible text) that upon which the sun shone 78 years ago, in very many respects it seems not the same. At that time the nominal but not actual sixty years' reign of the infant princess' grandfather was drawing to a close. The decrepit old king, for nearly a decade, had been confined in his palace, a prey to an unfortunate mental malady. From the celebration of his jubilee in 1809 until his death in 1820 he knew nothing of the stirring events which were happening in Europe. The disastrous retreat of Napoleon from Russia, his overthrow by the allied armies at Liepsig(sic), the assignment to him of the sovereignty of Elba, his escape from that island, the hundred days, the march upon Paris, the crushing catastrophe at Waterloo, and the banishment to St. Helena never again to be a disturber of the public peace—upon all these events the shattered mind of the aged monarch was a complete blank. Could he have understood what was passing, how grateful would have been to him the intelligence that the tyrant who had deluged the Continent with blood had been successfully grappled with at last! At the time of the Queen’s birth instead of a sovereignty in England there was a Regency, and the chronicles of that day have told us something of what the Court of the Regency was like. The quarrels between the Prince Regent and his wife, afterwards Queen Caroline, had become a national scandal. The vicious atmosphere which surrounded the Court was notorious, and the outlook for the future was a gloomy one. Princess Charlotte, the only child of the Regent, who had been married to the late King of the Belgians, had died, so that there was no direct succession to the Throne so far as the King’s eldest son was concerned. It passed to the next brother, the Duke of Clarence, who had contracted an unrecognised alliance with Mrs. Jordan, an actress. Any issue of such a union could not come to the Throne. Then the nation turned to the next brother, the Duke of Kent, who tor two years subsequently to the death of the Princess Charlotte was childless. At length, on the 24th of May, 1819, a Princess was born to the Duchess of Kent, and the infant of that time has for the unparalleled period of sixty years ruled over the vast domin-
