|The Telephone.| The revolution in intercourse between distant places effected by the electric telegraph has been noticed already, but even that has been outdone in rapidity by later applications of the electric current; for, just as spoken language is swifter than written words, so the telephone has overcome the limits hitherto imposed by space on conversation. It was a great marvel when, in 1852, the completion of a cable under the Channel rendered communication possible between London and Paris by means of a code of signals; but now statesmen and commercial men may discuss affairs confidentially by telephone; nay, a lover in Paris may listen with rapture to the very accents of his beloved lingering in London.

|The Phonograph.| One of the most remarkable modifications of the telephone is Edison’s phonograph, whereby the human voice and other sounds are recorded on a delicate membrane, which afterwards, for an indefinite period, is capable of being made to repeat or transmit these sounds. Future generations will be able thereby to listen to the actual voice and accents of the departed.

Not the least important of the recent modes of employing electricity is its use as an illuminant. |Electricity as an Illuminant.| At the beginning of the reign the streets of London and other towns, as well as many of the houses, were lit by gas; though as late as fifteen years ago it was still the custom in some old-fashioned hotels to charge half-a-guinea for the use of a pair of wax candles. But the invention of an illuminant which neither exhausts nor pollutes the air breathed by human beings, nor involves risk of accidental conflagration, which is easily manageable and throws off no smoke and very little heat, has been one of the benefits conferred by science so characteristic of this age.

|Photography.| The researches of Daguerre and Nicéphore de Niepce had established, before Queen Victoria ascended the throne, the possibility of obtaining permanent images by the action of light on silver-plated copper, but the first notable advance in the new art of photography was the invention of the calotype by Fox Talbot, who applied iodide of silver to paper, which was rendered sensitive to light by further treatment. Then, in 1850, came the collodion process, and the subsequent discovery of dry-plate processes brought photography within easy compass of amateurs, and greatly enhanced the value of photography as an aid to science. The exposure of thirty minutes, required under the Daguerrotype process, has been reduced to one-fifteenth of a second by the use of gelatine emulsion. The latest manifestation of photographic skill is certainly very marvellous, namely, the kinematograph. By a rapid succession of instantaneous exposures a series of plates is obtained so closely consecutive that when the images are reflected in equally rapid succession upon a screen, men and animals may be seen the size of life in natural movement.

Photography has had a powerful effect on the art of painting, not only by the cheap reproduction of acknowledged masterpieces, which is not without risk of encouraging conventional­ism in design, but by creating a more exacting standard of fidelity to nature. |Its Effect on Painting and Engraving.| While it has caused some painters to seek after intense realism, it has led others to a reactionary course which they term impressionism. Judging roughly from the vast numbers of pictures painted and exhibited each year, and from the immense prices given for the works of favourite masters, both living and dead, it is difficult to believe that, however great may be the aggregate expenditure by the purchasing public on photographs, it has interfered appreciably with the sale of pictures.

One branch of art certainly has suffered by the rivalry of sun pictures, namely, the various kinds of engraving. Wood-engraving, indeed, had already run to seed during the present century, from the affectation of craftsmen to a freedom and rapidity of which the material was not really capable: but engraving on copper and steel, etching, lithography, and, above all, mezzotint engraving (said to have been the joint invention of Prince Rupert and one of his officers named Siegen), had lost none of their delicacy and power when photography invaded their province. Excellent results are obtained from the best methods of photogravure and photolithography, and, where absolute accuracy of detail is required, they leave little to be desired; but the extent to which cheap “process” plates have supplanted the older arts of book illustration affords much to deplore from an artistic standpoint.

In one respect the reign of Queen Victoria offers a strange and rather melancholy contrast to all that have preceded it, inasmuch as it is the first during which the architects of this country have been totally destitute of any peculiar style of building. |Victorian Architecture.| Never were builders more ingenious or more skilful, never was there such vast expenditure in the erection of private or public buildings, but never before were architects so completely reliant on the past for design. Is it proposed to build a church, a public institution, or a dwelling-house? If you have the money you shall have one as well built as human hands can accomplish. But you must name your style—Greek, Palladian, Norman, Early English, Tudor, Jacobean, or Georgian—your architect will carry out a masterpiece in any one of them; but if you say Victorian, or the style of the day, he will give you François Ier to-day, Queen Anne to-morrow, and Pericles the day after. Buildings grow apace, and they are soundly and tastefully constructed, but British architecture is dead.

The same may be said of design in general. People of taste look with horror upon the fashions of the early years of the reign; the heavy mahogany furniture, the flowered wall-papers, the tapestry, the plate, the ornaments, are all condemned as barbarous; and the mode consists of Chippendale and Sheraton furniture and so-called “art” fabrics and papers. But how little this depends on more than fleeting fancy may be seen when it is considered how the taste has changed within a few years in the matter of table-glass. Ten years ago nothing would please but blown glass of the thinnest; Mr. Ruskin convinced us that the two qualities of glass which should be emphasised in the design were transparency and ductility. But we have thrown that doctrine to the winds now, and a visit to one of the leading warehouses will show how completely we have reverted to the brilliant, many-facetted bottles and glasses of fifty years ago.

It is natural, in considering the phenomenon of a great nation wholly without any stable principles to guide it in art, to ask what has the State done during sixty years in the matter of public education? |Universal Education.| Ask rather, what it has left undone! Certainly our rulers cannot be charged either with negligence or parsimony in this respect. Five years before the accession of Queen Victoria not a shilling of money was voted by Parliament towards elementary education. In 1833, for the first time, a grant of £20,000 was made for that purpose; at the present day the vote annually made for Education, Science, and Art exceeds ten millions. Even this is not enough to satisfy some people, as was made plain by the question addressed by an elector to a candidate for a Scottish constituency at a recent election. “Is Maister Wilson,” asked this enthusiast, “in favour of spending £36,000,000 a year on the Airmy, and only £12,000,000 on eddication? That’s to say, twelve millions for pittin’ brains into folks’ heads, and thirty-six millions for blawin’ them oot.”

A generation has grown up under universal compulsory education, and it is possible already to calculate some of the effects of that far-reaching measure on the material prosperity, moral character, and literary habits of our people. In regard to the first two, statistics go to show that, notwithstanding an increase of nearly 35 per cent. in the population since the introduction of compulsory education in 1871, there had been a decrease between that year and 1894 of nearly 25 per cent. in the number of paupers, from 1,079,391 to 812,441. The convictions for crime showed a corresponding diminution from 12,953 to 9,634, or rather more than 25 per cent.; while, during a similar period, the number of “juvenile offenders” had been reduced to the enormous extent of over 71½ per cent.

As to the impulse given to the demand for literature by the extension of education, there need be no doubt whatever; the enormous supply continually pouring from the press of the country is sufficient proof of that. In respect of books, the returns from the numerous public libraries in the country show that works of fiction are in request far beyond all the other branches of literature put together. |The Predominance of Fiction.| Some sinister conclusions have been drawn from that fact, but it is not always remembered that most of those who frequent free libraries are hard-working people, who turn to books for recreation rather than instruction. On the whole, English fiction remains wholesome, a result which, notwithstanding the democratic nature of our Constitution, is owing, undoubtedly, in large measure to the tone maintained in her Court by our present Monarch.

That ephemeral, but not the less potent, form of literature known as the Press, may be said almost truly to be the creation of the Victorian age. Newspapers, as we know them, are the outcome of two circumstances, the removal of the paper tax in 1861 and the spread of telegraphic communication. |The Growth of Journalism.| Every industry, every sect, every amuse­ment, every shade of opinion, now has its special organs in the press; and perhaps nothing is more remarkable than the enterprise and high quality of the provincial journals, as distinguished from those published in the Metropolis. British journalism differs in several important respects from that of all other European countries. In the first place, it is absolutely free: there is nothing approaching a censorship of the Press, and in those rare instances in which, during the present reign, publishers have been interfered with by the State, as has occasionally happened in Ireland, the offence has not been a political one, but such incitement to crime or disorder as would be punishable in any private individual. It is matter for just pride that this liberty is exceedingly seldom abused. Another point of difference is that the British Government has no official or semi-official organ in the press. Official announcements are communicated, when necessary, to press agencies, and through them find their way into journals of all shades of politics. Lastly, the British press has maintained, as a rule, its impersonality. There has been a slight tendency of recent years to exchange the editorial “we” for a more familiar style, but this has been confined so far to journals of little influence. Leading articles and critical reviews are almost invariably anonymous, whereas in France the weight attached to these is proportioned to the repute of the name by which they are signed. In order to give some idea of the daily output of the newspaper press in London alone the following instance may be given:—On Monday, February 13, 1893, Mr. Gladstone introduced his second Home Rule Bill in the House of Commons. On the following morning there were despatched from a single establishment, that of W. H. Smith and Son, 374,218 newspapers, weighing upwards of 44 tons.

It would be impossible within due limits to pass in review, even in the most sketchy fashion, the advance made in natural science, especially as each province of the whole realm of knowledge has become divided and sub-divided into sections, each the peculiar department of specialists.|The Advance of Natural Science.| Three hundred years ago it was possible for Francis Bacon to survey the entire firmament of human understanding, but in the nineteenth century the task accomplished in the Advancement of Learning and the Novum Organum has developed to a scale only to be compassed in such a prodigious publication as the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” of which the latest edition consists of twenty-five volumes in quarto, containing upwards of 20,750 pages printed in double columns, contributed by no less than 1,200 different writers, besides translators and revisers.

In no department of science, perhaps, has progress brought such immediate benefit to the people as in that of surgery and medicine. |Surgery and Medicine.| The introduction of anæsthetics has been mentioned in an earlier chapter; the present year, 1897, is the jubilee anniversary of that blessed event. The vaccination laws were consolidated in 1871, and universal vaccination insisted on, with the result that a loathsome disease, which formerly brought unspeakable misery upon all civilised nations has been practically vanquished. The deaths from small-pox in England, which, at the close of the last century, were reckoned at 3,000 per million, had sunk in the decade from 1878–87 to 54 per million. Attempts have been made persistently by a small minority to resist compulsory vaccination. Persons inclined to listen to arguments against this legislation on the score of undue interference with liberty, should study the Report of the Local Government Board upon an outbreak of small-pox in Sheffield in 1887–88. Of 6,088 persons attacked 590 died; among children under ten years of age, 5 per 1,000 of those vaccinated were attacked and ·09 per 1,000 died; of the unvaccinated, 101 per 1,000 were attacked and 44 per 1,000 died.

Although it is the name of a Frenchman, the late M. Pasteur, which is most conspicuously associated with recent progress in pathology, it was Sir Joseph (now Lord) Lister who was led by Pasteur’s researches into the theory of fermentation to discover the antiseptic system of surgery. He employed carbolic acid, previously known as little more than a laboratory product, in destroying microbes which had found access to a wound, and thereby first made surgery scientific. But Lister did more than that; the antiseptic treatment was superseded in turn by the aseptic, in which, by sterilising everything that might come in contact with wounds, access was refused altogether to microbes, and henceforward operations surpassing the most ambitious dreams of the old school of surgery were rendered possible. From the work of Pasteur and Lister has arisen the science of bacteriology, which, in the hands of Professor Koch, of Berlin, and others, is being developed into the systematic “cultivation” of the germs of specific diseases.

Mr. Disraeli was once greatly laughed at for announcing that the policy of his Administration was Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas. Since then the two great political parties have vied with each other in framing legislation for the sanitation of cities and all human dwellings. |Sanitary Legislation.| It may be difficult to decide which has had most hand in the good result already shown in the mortality returns, legislators or men of science; at all events, they are worthy rivals. The annual death-rate in England during the first ten years of the present reign was 22·4 per 1,000; it was a shade higher in the decade from 1861–70, standing at 22·5 per 1,000. Then came the age of sanitation and the dawn of bacteriology; the death-rate sank in 1871–80 to 21·4 per 1,000, and in 1881–90 to 19·1 per 1,000.

British surgeons have not been slow to avail themselves of the discovery, by Professor Röntgen, of certain non-luminous rays beyond the spectrum, which are capable of penetrating substances hitherto considered impermeable. By laying such a structure as a human limb upon a properly sensitised surface, and exposing it to these rays thrown from a tube excited by electricity, a permanent image is obtained of the bones and denser portions of the structure. By this means the exact position of any foreign substance, such as a bullet or needle, or the nature of a dislocation or fracture, may be ascertained with precision; and already it has been found possible to examine the condition of the internal organs of a living person.

In bringing to a close this brief survey of the reign of twelve lustres—the longest reign in the history of Great Britain—we may note with gratitude that not one of the many influences that have contributed to the moral or material well-being of the subjects of the empire shows any sign of abating in force. It is a task of no little difficulty and complexity to reconcile the rival, and sometimes conflicting, interests arising in a vast population, and, at the same time, to maintain our lead in the competitive industry of nations; yet it is one which the personal character of the Monarch, in conjunction with the constitutional development of the last sixty years justify the Legislature in undertaking with courage and good hope.

SIXTY YEARS A QUEEN.

The Diamond Jubilee Celebrations.

By ALFRED C. HARMSWORTH.

CHAPTER I.

The Central Idea of the Celebrations—The Imperial Character of the Pageant—The Colonial Premiers Invited—The Decorations—Influx of Visitors—Grand Stands—Precautions against Accidents—Thanksgiving Services on Accession Day—The Queen’s Arrival in London—Night in the Streets.

WE have traced the history of our great Queen down to the point where her Record Reign reaches its culmination in the festivities of June, 1897. Nothing now remains but to give some account of these Imperial celebrations—Imperial in the truest sense of the word, because faithful subjects of Her Majesty, of every colour and every creed, came from the four corners of the most majestic Empire that has ever existed to pay homage to the Lady Ruler over all. Pen and pencil must necessarily fail to do justice to so unique a demonstration of an Empire’s love and devotion, but the reader of these words may rely upon it that our account is true in every detail. Such a record will be found useful not only by those who actually took part in the Diamond Jubilee festivities and who wish to refresh their memories, but also by those to whom they will be matter of history.

The possibilities of a great celebration in 1897 were first discussed after the Jubilee of 1887, although it was not until 1896 that public interest was thoroughly aroused in the great event. Men felt vaguely that the sixtieth anniversary of the reign of the best-beloved of all British Sovereigns demanded an especial effort on the part of all loyal subjects; but as to the manner in which the event should be celebrated, opinions were as various as the men who gave utterance to them. One only definite desire was in everybody’s heart—that the Queen should come down among her people and receive their congratulations in person. This was the central idea round which all schemes clustered, and this was the idea to which the Queen gave her sanction. In March of 1897 it was officially proclaimed that Her Majesty would go in procession to St. Paul’s to offer up her thanks to the Supreme Being for all the blessings of her long reign.

And here let honour be rendered to whom honour is due. From the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Chamberlain, emanated the action which gave the event its Imperial character—the invitation of the Colonial Premiers and the representative detachments of men from the various forces of Colonial and other troops serving under her throughout our world-wide Empire. |Colonial Premiers Invited.| A brilliant military pageant might have been effected by the employment only of the troops of our regular army; but we have other forces across the seas, small it may be in numbers, but magnificent in physique and all that constitutes martial efficiency, whose presence on such an occasion would add lustre and a peculiar significance to the great function.

Meanwhile our grey old London set about adorning itself for the great event. To transform a working city like London into a temporary fairyland is a task of herculean proportions, but it was done! The Corporation voted £25,000 to a decoration fund, and the most moderate estimate fixes the cost of London’s holiday garb at £250,000. Venetian masts appeared suddenly in all the streets along which the procession was to make its way; and as the fateful day drew near, festoons of flowers and loyal inscriptions were suspended from these. Cunningly concealed in the hanging bouquets of flowers were electric lamps destined to make the streets even more brilliant at night than they were in the daytime.

The actual route literally blazed with colour.|The Decorations.| Flags were at a premium and so were coloured stuffs and flowers, for the Jubilee had asked more than the supply, and in many cases the North country mills were working day and night to make good the deficiency. When at last the great city had finished her toilet, not even her own children recognized her.

St. James’s Street sat at the head of all, a perfect poem of decorative beauty. There were two massive Corinthian pillars at either end, their capitals of gold surmounted by large globes, their bases adorned with choice growing palms and flowers. Forty venetian masts capped with the Imperial crown stood on each side of the street, and from mast to mast were laced festoons of evergreens, from which hung baskets of rare flowers, birds in flight, and globes of red, white, and blue glass, which sparkled in the sunlight and turned the roadway into a pathway of quivering light.

Other thoroughfares vied with St. James’s Street. In the Strand the omnibuses ran under swaying lines of many-coloured globes hanging across the roadway from one flower-bedecked venetian mast to another. Round the pillars of the Mansion House and the Royal Exchange were serpentine trails of tiny gas jets winding far up under the dark eaves of the roof, and from Buckingham Palace to St. Paul’s vast buildings were literally outlined with tiny gas and electric light lamps. The Fire Monument and other public monuments came in for special decorative attention, and in some cases hundreds of pounds were spent in beautifying them for the great show.

In Victoria Street the offices of the various Colonies were alive with colour, and even the south side of the river, where loyalty is more abundant than money, was gay with its decorations, in the form of golden eagles with outstretched wings, and lines of real flowers stretched across the thoroughfares on invisible wires.

But the generous efforts of Civic and Parish authorities were not a whit more remarkable than those of private individuals. Many of the houses along the route of the procession were covered with decorations from cellar to attic. The colour generally chosen was red, but in some instances costly materials of delicate shades were used. Draperies of brilliant hues were hung from almost every window, so that some of the streets resembled theatres rather than the busy thoroughfares of a busy city.

Nor were the decorations confined to the streets. Every errand boy wore his Jubilee favour days before the event. From every whip fluttered a little pennant of the national colour. Scarcely a bicycle passed that had not on its handle-bar gay streamers of red, white, and blue, and even the practical top-hatted city man sported in his button-hole the colours which rule the world.

Long before these preparations were completed, the invasion of London by visitors from the country, from America, and from the Continent had commenced. |Influx of Visitors.| The streets, always pretty-well congested with the great press of traffic, were now almost impassable. Vast good-humoured crowds surged up and down the principal thoroughfares, and travelling from one part of the town to another became a matter of increasing difficulty. Where all the people were accommodated it would be difficult to say. Certain it is, that all the rooms in the better-known hotels were taken weeks beforehand, and the landladies of Bloomsbury reaped a rich harvest.

In addition to the vast amount of accommodation afforded by the houses lying along the route, every available coign of vantage was seized upon for the erection of a stand. Churches were lost to view beneath vast tiers of red upholstered seats reaching half way up their towers, and what had been known as Charing Cross Station was buried from sight under a mammoth thousand-seated stand. |Grand Stands.| “Can our City Princes not have noticed,” asks a writer in the Daily Mail with quaint humour, “that somebody has stuck a lot of carpentry on the very pediment of the Royal Exchange? Somebody else has boarded up the Law Courts, and barristers and solicitors stoop and dive in as if they were going to clean out their chicken houses. The Houses of Parliament are all scaffolding too, and at first, seeing no reports in the papers, I thought they had been abolished while I was away.... Even to take a penny boat at Westminster you have to go under a sort of triumphal arch of joinery.... They are actually changing all London from building into furniture.”

One of the largest stands was in Whitehall opposite the Horse Guards.I A large number of carpenters were employed for more than six weeks in its erection; £7,000 was paid to the Woods and Forests Department for the rent of the site, and its construction cost another £6,000. It contained some 4,000 seats, which were advertised at from four to twenty guineas. It was built into foundations of solid concrete from three feet to six feet thick, and contained 150 tons of timber and fifteen tons of forty-five feet steel girders; 5,000 chairs were specially purchased for its equipment and, besides the seats, it contained promenades, reception rooms, a luncheon room for the accommodation of 400 people, ladies’ rooms, telephones, and a smoking gallery.

Another huge stand was that erected in the churchyard of St. Martin’s Church, Charing Cross. This also contained 4,000 seats, ranging in price from one to fifteen guineas. Its erection engaged the labour of 120 men for some five weeks. It contained 175,000 cubic feet of timber and twenty tons of ironwork. The rent of the site was £4,000.

There were many other stands of colossal size, but that which represented the most enterprising speculation of the celebration was undoubtedly the colossal stand on the north side of St. Paul’s Churchyard.J For the purpose of its erection one of the most valuable city properties was purchased and pulled down. The seats in these various stands were offered at fabulous prices, but the public refused to purchase, and the venture resulted in a heavy loss to its promoters, as indeed did most of the speculations in seats. However, very large sums indeed were paid to witness the procession, £2,000 being offered and accepted for the use of a building in St. Paul’s Churchyard for the day. In some cases the vendors offered prizes ranging from £50 downwards to purchasers of their seats.

On June 11 the official programme was published, and henceforth the sole topic in men’s minds was Jubilee Day and its doings. Previous to this, however, the most elaborate precautions had been taken to ensure the safety of the multitude of sightseers, and to guard against any hitch occurring in the actual procession.

Meanwhile the guests of the Nation began to arrive from every part of the World. The Prime Ministers of our great dependencies in Australasia, in South Africa, and Canada, were lodged in the palatial Hotel Cecil; the foreign princes and their suites were accommodated in the Royal Palaces and in private mansions rented or lent for the occasion, while the detachments of troops from the various self-governing and Crown Colonies were billeted at Chelsea Hospital, at Hounslow, and at Woolwich. The Indian officers composing the deputation from the Imperial Service Troops, and the British officers in charge, were lodged at the “Star and Garter” Hotel at Richmond. It is impossible to convey any impression of the hospitality that was now lavished on our honoured guests. While the troopers of the Colonial forces were being fêted by Tommy Atkins and the Volunteers of London, the Colonial Premiers were the lions of the great houses of the Metropolis. “He died from the effects of British hospitality” is the humorous epitaph composed for himself, in the event of that casualty, by the Right Honourable G. H. Reid, Premier of New South Wales. Royal carriages and Royal servants were placed at the disposal of visitors of high rank; but it is certain that the genuine enthusiasm of their reception among the millions of London was even more highly valued by our distinguished visitors than these marks of Royal favour.

While the good citizens of London were entertaining the guests of the Nation and getting their houses in order for the culminating function of June 22, there was ever present in their minds a fear lest the great festival would be marred by a catastrophe such as that which threw a black shadow over the Coronation of the Czar. It was vaguely felt that the vast multitudes that would throng the streets on that day might become unmanageable—that some of the temporary stands would collapse, or that the great pressure of the massed crowds at certain points would result in disaster. |Precautions against Accidents.| It is due entirely to the sagacity and foresight of the authorities that the streets were never more safe than they were on June 22, and that not a single life was lost in consequence of the Jubilee arrangements. Temporary stands were examined—and where faulty condemned—again and again by the officials of the London County Council and of the Corporation, and the most scrupulous care was taken that there should not be gathered at any one point a larger number of persons than could be easily controlled.