that Brown was presented with one of his gold medals. In all these cases the
jury had refused to allow the plea of insanity; but Roderick Maclean's attempt

in 1882 had a different issue. On this occasion the pistol was found to have
been loaded, and the public indignation, emphasised as it was by Victoria's

growing popularity, was particularly great. Either for this or for some other
reason the procedure of the last forty years was abandoned" target="_blank" title="a.被抛弃的；无约束的">abandoned, and Maclean was

tried for high treason. The result was what might have been expected: the jury
brought in a verdict of "not guilty, but insane"; and the prisoner was sent to

an asylum during Her Majesty's pleasure. Their verdict, however, produced a
remarkable consequence. Victoria, who doubtless carried in her mind some

memory of Albert's disapproval of a similar verdict in the case of Oxford, was
very much annoyed. What did the jury mean, she asked, by saying that Maclean

was not guilty? It was perfectly clear that he was guilty--she had seen him
fire off the pistol herself. It was in vain that Her Majesty's constitutional

advisers reminded her of the principle of English law which lays down that no
man can be found guilty of a crime unless he be proved to have had a criminal

intention. Victoria was quite unconvinced. "If that is the law," she said,
"the law must be altered:" and altered it was. In 1883 an Act was passed

changing the form of the verdict in cases of insanity, and the confusing
anomaly remains upon the Statute Book to this day.

But it was not only through the feelings--commiserating or indignant--of
personal sympathy that the Queen and her people were being drawn more nearly

together; they were beginning, at last, to come to a close and permanent
agreement upon the conduct of public affairs. Mr. Gladstone's second

administration (1880-85) was a succession of failures, ending in disaster and
disgrace; liberalism fell into discredit with the country, and Victoria

perceived with joy that her distrust of her Ministers was shared by an
ever-increasing number of her subjects. During the crisis in the Sudan, the

popular temper was her own. She had been among the first to urge the necessity
of an expedition to Khartoum, and, when the news came of the catastrophic

death of General Gordon, her voice led the chorus of denunciation which raved
against the Government. In her rage, she despatched a fulminating telegram to

Mr. Gladstone, not in the usual cypher, but open; and her letter of condolence
to Miss Gordon, in which she attacked her Ministers for breach of faith, was

widely published. It was rumoured that she had sent for Lord Hartington, the
Secretary of State for War, and vehemently upbraided him. "She rated me," he

was reported to have told a friend, "as if I'd been a footman." "Why didn't
she send for the butler?" asked his friend. "Oh," was the reply, "the butler

generally manages to keep out of the way on such occasions."
But the day came when it was impossible to keep out of the way any longer. Mr.

Gladstone was defeated, and resigned. Victoria, at a final interview, received
him with her usual amenity, but, besides the formalities demanded by the

occasion, the only remark which she made to him of a personal nature was to
the effect that she supposed Mr. Gladstone would now require some rest. He

remembered with regret how, at a similar audience in 1874, she had expressed
her trust in him as a supporter of the throne; but he noted the change without

surprise. "Her mind and opinions," he wrote in his diary afterwards, "have
since that day been seriously warped."

Such was Mr. Gladstone's view,; but the majority of the nation by no means
agreed with him; and, in the General Election of 1886, they showed decisively

that Victoria's politics were identical with theirs by casting forth the
contrivers of Home Rule--that abomination of desolation--into outer darkness,

and placing Lord Salisbury in power. Victoria's satisfaction was profound. A
flood of new unwonted hopefulness swept over her, stimulating her vital

spirits with a surprising force. Her habit of life was suddenly altered;
abandoning the long seclusion which Disraeli's persuasions had only

momentarily interrupted, she threw herself vigorously into a multitude of
public activities. She appeared at drawing-rooms, at concerts, at reviews; she

laid foundation-stones; she went to Liverpool to open an international
exhibition, driving through the streets in her open carriage in heavy rain

amid vast applauding crowds. Delighted by the welcome which met her
everywhere, she warmed to her work. She visited Edinburgh, where the ovation

of Liverpool was repeated and surpassed. In London, she opened in high state
the Colonial and Indian Exhibition at South Kensington. On this occasion the

ceremonial was particularly magnificent; a blare of trumpets announced the
approach of Her Majesty; the "Natiohal Anthem" followed; and the Queen, seated

on a gorgeousthrone of hammered gold, replied with her own lips to the
address that was presented to her. Then she rose, and, advancing upon the

platform with regal port, acknowledged the acclamations of the great assembly
by a succession of curtseys, of elaborate and commanding grace.

Next year was the fiftieth of her reign, and in June the splendid anniversary
was celebrated in solemn pomp. Victoria, surrounded by the highest dignitaries

of her realm, escorted by a glittering galaxy of kings and princes, drove
through the crowdedenthusiasm of the capital to render thanks to God in

Westminster Abbey. In that triumphant" target="_blank" title="a.胜利的；洋洋得意的">triumphant hour the last remaining traces of past
antipathies and past disagreements were altogether swept away. The Queen was

hailed at once as the mother of her people and as the embodied symbol of their
imperialgreatness; and she responded to the double sentiment with all the

ardour of her spirit. England and the people of England, she knew it, she felt
it, were, in some wonderful and yet quite simple manner, hers. Exultation,

affection, gratitude, a profound sense of obligation, an unbounded pride--such
were her emotions; and, colouring and intensifying the rest, there was

something else. At last, after so long, happiness--fragmentary, perhaps, and
charged with gravity, but true and unmistakable none the less--had returned to

her. The unaccustomed feeling filled and warmed her consciousness" target="_blank" title="n.意识；觉悟；知觉">consciousness. When, at
Buckingham Palace again, the long ceremony over, she was asked how she was, "I

am very tired, but very happy," she said.
III

And so, after the toils and tempests of the day, a long evening
followed--mild, serene, and lighted with a golden glory. For an unexampled

atmosphere of success and adoration invested the last period of Victoria's
life. Her triumph was the summary, the crown, of a greater triumph--the

culminating prosperity of a nation. The solid splendour of the decade between
Victoria's two jubilees can hardly be paralleled in the annals of England. The

sage counsels of Lord Salisbury seemed to bring with them not only wealth and
power, but security; and the country settled down, with calm assurance, to the

enjoyment of an established grandeur. And--it was only natural--Victoria
settled down too. For she was a part of the establishment--an essential part

as it seemed--a fixture--a magnificent, immovable sideboard in the huge saloon
of state. Without her the heaped-up banquet of 1890 would have lost its

distinctive quality--the comfortable order of the substantial unambiguous
dishes, with their background of weighty glamour, half out of sight.

Her own existence came to harmonise more and more with what was around her.