Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 5.djvu/227

 LAURIER

��There is genuine grief in the neighboring na- tion of seventy-five million inhabitants, the kins- men of her own people, by whom at all times and under all circumstances her name was held in high reverence, and where, in the darkest days of the Civil War, when the relations of the two countries were strained almost to the point of snapping, the poet Whittier well expressed the feeling of his countrymen when he ex- claimed :

"We bowed the heart, if not the knee, To England's Queen, God bless her."

Thei'e is wailing and lamentation among the savage and barbarian peoples of her vast em- pire, in the wigwams of our own Indian tribes, in the huts of the colored races of Africa and of India, to whom she was at all times the Great Mother, the living impersonation of majesty and benevolence. Aye, and there is mourning also, genuine and unaffected, in the farmhouses of South Africa, which have been lately and still are devastated by war, for it is a fact that above the clang of arms, above the many angers en- gendered by the war, the name of Queen Vic- toria was always held in high respect, even by those who are fighting her troops, as a symbol of justice, and perhaps her kind hand was much relied upon when the supreme hour of recon- ciliation should come.

Undoubtedly we may find in history instances where death has caused perhaps more passionate


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