Page:Australian views of England.djvu/44

  To-day I heard seven thousand people of all social degrees mingling their voices in this strain of national sorrow and supplication. In every city and town of England to-day the ordinary pursuits of life have been suspended. But it is not by closed shutters and doors, by habiliments of mourning, by the tolling of Church bells, and by drooping flags wreathed with crape, that the national sorrow is most touchingly expressed. You see it everywhere in the grief-burdened faces of the people. You see it in the utter absence of any expression or sign inconsistent with this sense of loss. Deeply, and with a true love, do the people mourn for the Consort of their beloved Queen,

And she, poor Royal Lady! how does her woman's heart bear up in this great and sudden trial? "Many poor women have had to bear this trial," was the simple outburst of Victoria's grief and resignation. The people are told that their Queen is calm. Nothing more is known from the seclusion of her island-home.

Unhappily this is a season of deep-seated misery at the hearths of many of her people: In the neighbourhood of Manchester alone it is supposed