Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 407, September, 1849

If any doubt could be entertained, by a well-informed mind, of the incalculable importance of loyalty, as the chief and often the only bond which holds society together, it would be removed by two events which have occurred in our own times, – the Moscow invasion, and the steadiness of England during the mind-quake of 1848. On the first occasion, this sacred principle defeated the mightiest armament ever assembled by the powers of intellect against the liberties of mankind; on the last, it preserved unshaken and unscathed the ark of the constitution in the British islands, amidst the deluge which had shaken the thrones of almost all the other European monarchies. In these two examples, where two states in the opposite extremes of infancy and civilisation were successively rescued from the most appalling dangers, amidst the ruins of all around them, by the influence of this noble principle, we may discern the clearest proof of its lasting influence upon man, and of the incalculable blessings it is fitted to confer, not less in the most enlightened than the most unenlightened ages of society. But for it, the social institutions of Great Britain would have been overturned on the 10th April 1848, and England, with all its education, civilisation, and habits of freedom, would have been consigned to destruction by a deluge of civilised barbarians, compared to whom, as Macaulay has well said, those that followed the standard of Attila or Alaric were humane and temperate warriors. Hence we may learn how wonderfully loyalty is strengthened, instead of being weakened, by the progress of knowledge and the spread of civilisation in a really free community; and what force that noble principle acquires when, to the generous enthusiasm which binds the unlettered warrior to his chief, is added the determination of freemen to defend a throne which all feel to be the keystone in the arch of the national fortunes.

It is a fortunate, perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say a providential circumstance, that a Queen, during the late eventful years, has been on the throne of the British empire. Had a king been there, still more one of unpopular manner or retired habits, when all the thrones of Europe were falling around us, the event might have been very different, and England, with all its glories, have been sunk in the bottomless pit of revolution. The feelings of loyalty to a Queen, especially if she is young and handsome, and unites the virtues to the graces of her sex, are very different from those which, under the most favourable circumstances, can be awakened in favour of a king. The natural gallantry of man, the feelings of chivalry, the respect due to the softer sex, are mingled in overwhelming proportions with the abstract passions of loyalty when a young and interesting woman, endowed with masculine energy, but adorned with feminine beauty, surrounded by the husband of her choice and the children of her love, is seen braving the risks and enduring the fatigues of a journey through lands recently convulsed by civil dissension, solely to win the love of her subjects, to heal the divisions of the great family of which she forms the head.

History affords numerous examples of the far greater power, in periods of intestine troubles, queens have than kings in winning the affections or calming the exasperation of their subjects. Despite all her errors, notwithstanding her faults, Queen Mary exercised a sway over a large part of her subjects which no man in similar circumstances could have done. Austria would have been crushed by the arms of France and Bavaria in 1744, but for the chivalrous loyalty which led the Hungarian nobles to exclaim in a transport of generous enthusiasm, "Moriamur pro Rege nostro, Maria Theresa."

"Fair Austria spreads her mournful charms,
The Queen, the beauty, sets the world in arms."

And it is doubtful if all the fervours of the Reformation could have enabled England to withstand the assault of the Catholic league, headed by Spain in the time of Philip II., if in defence of the nation had not been joined the chivalrous loyalty of a gallant nobility to their queen, as well as the stern resolution of a Protestant people in behalf of their religion and their liberties.

But the passion of loyalty, as all other passions, requires aliment for its support. Like love, it can live on wonderfully little hope, but it absolutely requires some. A look, a smile, a word from a sovereign, doubtless go a great way; but entire and long-continued absence will chill even the warmest affections. It is on this account that royal progresses have so important an influence in knitting together the bonds which unite a people to their sovereign. They have one inestimable effect – they make them known to each other. The one sees in person the enthusiastic affection with which the sovereign is regarded by the people, the latter the parental interest with which the people are regarded by their sovereign. Prejudices, perhaps, nourished by faction or fostered by party, melt away before the simple light of truth. A few hours of mutual intercourse dispels the alienation which years of separation, and the continued efforts of guilty ambition during a generation, may have produced. The generous affections spring up unbidden, when the evidence of the senses dispels the load of falsehood by which they had been restrained. Mutual knowledge produces mutual interest; and the chances of success to subsequent efforts to bring about an estrangement are materially lessened, by the discovery of how wide had been the misapprehension which had formerly existed, and how deep the mutual affection which really dwelt in the recesses of the heart, and was now brought to light by the happy approximation of the sovereign and her people.

It was a noble spectacle to behold a young Queen, at a time when scarce a monarch in Europe was secure on his throne, setting out with her illustrious consort and family to make a royal progress through her dominions, and selecting for the first place of her visit the island which had so recently raised the standard of rebellion against her government, and for the next the city which had first in the empire responded to the cry of treason raised in Paris, on the overthrow of the throne of Louis Philippe. Nor has the result failed to correspond, even more happily than could have been hoped, to the gallant undertaking. If it be true, as is commonly reported, that our gracious sovereign said, "She went to Ireland to make friends, but to the Land of Cakes to find them," she must by this time have been convinced that the generous design has, in both islands, proved successful beyond what her most enthusiastic friends could have dared to hope. Who could have recognised, in the multitudes which thronged to witness her passage through Cork, Dublin, and Belfast, and the universal acclamations with which she was everywhere received by all classes of her subjects, the chief cities of an island long torn by civil dissension, and which had only a year before broken out into actual rebellion against her government? Who could have recognised in the youthful sovereign visiting the public buildings of Dublin, like a private peeress, without any of the state of a Sovereign, and chiefly interested with her royal consort in the institutions devoted to beneficence, the Head of a Government whom The Nation had so long represented as callous to all the sufferings of the people? And during the magnificent spectacle of the royal progress through Glasgow, where five hundred thousand persons were assembled from that great city, and the neighbouring counties, to see their Queen – and she passed for three miles through stately structures, loaded with loyalty, under an almost continued archway of flags, amidst incessant and deafening cheers – who could have believed he was in a city in which democratic revolt had actually broken out only eighteen months before, and the walls had all been placarded, on the day when London was menaced, with treasonable proclamations, calling on the people to rise in their thousands and tens of thousands against the throne? And how blessed the contrast to the condition of Scotland when her last Queen had been in that neighbourhood, and the towers of Glasgow cathedral looked down on Morton issuing from the then diminutive borough, to assail, in the immediate vicinity at Langside, the royal army headed by Mary, and drive her to exile, captivity, and death.[34 - It is a curious coincidence, that the first man whom her Majesty met with and addressed, when she landed in Glasgow, was the Earl of Morton, the lineal descendant of the ruthless baron whose arms then proved so fatal to her beautiful and unfortunate ancestress.]

We are not foolish enough to expect impossibilities from the Queen's visit, – how splendid and gratifying soever its circumstances may have been. We know well how many and deep-rooted are the social evils which in both islands afflict society, and we are not so simple as to imagine that they will be removed by the sight of the Sovereign, as the innocent peasants believe that all physical diseases will be cured by the royal touch. We are well aware that the impression of even the most splendid pageants is often only transitory, and that sad realities sometimes return with accumulated force after they are over, from the contrast they present to imaginative vision. Still a step, and that, too, a most important one, has been taken in the right direction. If great, and, in some respects, lasting good has been done – if evils remain, as remain they ever will, in the present complicated condition of society, and the contending interests which agitate its bosom – one evil, and that the greatest of all, is lessened, and that is an estrangement between the People and their Sovereign. Crimes may return; but the recurrence of the greatest of all, because it is the parent of all others – high treason – is for a time, to any extent at least, rendered impossible. The most sacred and important of all bonds, that which unites the sovereign and her subjects, has been materially strengthened. The most noble of all feelings, the disinterested affection of a people to their Queen, has been called into generous and heart-stirring action. The "unbought loyalty of men, the cheap defence of nations," is not at an end. And if the effect of the Royal Visit were only that, in the greatest cities of her dominions, our gracious sovereign, in an age unusually devoted to material influences, has succeeded, by the sweetness and grace of her manners, in causing the hearts of some hundred thousands of her subjects to throb with loyal devotion, and, for a time at least, supplanted the selfish by the generous emotions – the effect is not lost to the cause of order and the moral elevation of her people.

Dies Boreales

No. IV

CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS

Scene —The Pavilion

Time —One P.M

Buller – Seward – Talboys – North

TALBOYS

Here he is – here he is! I traced him by Crutch-print to the Van – like an old Stag of Ten to his lair by the Slot.

SEWARD

Thank heaven! But was this right, my dear sir?

BULLER

Your Majesty ought not thus to have secreted yourself from your subjects.

SEWARD

We feared you had absconded – abdicated – and retired into a Monastery.

BULLER

We have all been miserable about you since an early hour in the morning – invisible to mortal eye since yester bed-going gong – regal couch manifestly unslept in – tent after tent scrutinised as narrowly as if for a mouse – Swiss Giantess searched as if by custom-house officers – no Christopher in the Encampment – what can I compare it to – but a Bee-hive that had lost its Queen. The very Drones were in a ferment – the workers demented – dismal the hum of grief and rage – of national lamentation and civil war.

NORTH

Billy could have told you of my retreat.

SEWARD

Billy was in a state of distraction – rushed to the Van – and, finding it empty, fainted.

NORTH

Billy saw me in the Van – and I told him to shut the spring smartly – and be mum.

BULLER

Villain!

NORTH

Obedience to orders is the sum-total of Duty. Most of the men seem tolerably sober – those whom despair had driven to drink have been sent to sleeping-quarters – the Camp has recovered from its alarm – and is fit for Inspection by the General Commanding the Forces.

SEWARD

But have you breakfasted, my dear sir?

NORTH

Leave me alone for that. What have you all been about?

TALBOYS

We three started at Five for Luib, in high glee.

NORTH

What! in face of my prediction? Did I not tell you that in that dull, dingy, dirty, ochre sunset – in that wan moon and those tallow-candle stars – I saw the morning's Deluge.

BULLER

But did you not also quote Sir David Brewster? "In the atmosphere in which he lives and breathes, and the phenomena of which he daily sees, and feels, and describes, and measures, the philosopher stands in acknowledged ignorance of the laws which govern it. He has ascertained, indeed, its extent, its weight, and its composition; but though he has mastered the law of heat and moisture, and studied the electric agencies which influence its condition, he cannot predict, or even approximate to a prediction, whether on the morrow the sun shall shine, or the rain fall, or the wind blow, or the lightning descend."

NORTH

And all that is perfectly true. Nevertheless, we weather-wise and weather-foolish people – not Philosophers but Empirics – sailors and shepherds – with all our eyes on the lower and the higher heavens – gather up prognostications of the character of the coming time – an hour or a day – take in our canvass and set our storm-jib – or run for some bay where the prudent ship shall ride at anchor, as safe and almost as motionless as if she were in a dry-dock; or off to the far hill-side to look after the silly sheep – yet not so silly either – for there they are, instinctive of a change, lying secured by that black belt of Scotch-Firs against the tempest brewing over Lockerby or Lochmaben – far from the loun Bilholm Braes! – You Three, started at Five o'clock for Luib?

TALBOYS

I rejoice we did. A close carriage is in all weathers detestable – your vehicle should be open to all skyey influences – with nothing about it that can be set up or let down – otherwise some one or other of the party – on some pretence or other – will be for shutting you all in. And then – Farewell, Thou green Earth – Thou fair Day – and ye Skies! It had apparently been raining for some little time —

NORTH