The Life and Times of Queen Victoria (Vol. 1-4). Robert Thomas Wilson

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СКАЧАТЬ worst of these receptions is, that, although they may be sincere up to a certain point, they have a tendency to run into extravagance, and may thus provoke a reaction at some future date.

      Before the end of the same month the Queen was engaged in a domestic ceremony of great interest to the citizens of London, and to many others far beyond the limits of the capital. The old Royal Exchange, the successor to Sir Thomas Gresham’s original building, destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, was consumed in a conflagration which broke out on the 10th of January, 1838. The new building—that which now stands—was erected from the designs of Mr. William Tite, and opened by her Majesty in person on the 28th of October, 1844. The procession left Buckingham Palace at eleven o’clock A.M., and passed through streets gaily decorated for the occasion. Her Majesty’s carriage was drawn by eight cream-coloured horses, and the chief occupant wore a tiara of diamonds and a white ermine mantle. On alighting at the Exchange, the Queen and Prince Albert, preceded by the Lord Mayor with his Sword of State, went over the building, and finally entered the Reading Room. Here, seated on a throne, her Majesty received the address which had been prepared by the City authorities, and which was read by the Recorder. Allusion was made in it to the fact that the first building had been opened by Queen Elizabeth, and a hope was expressed that the new edifice would endure for ages, a memorial and monument of the commercial grandeur, the prosperity, and the peaceful triumphs of Victoria’s reign.

      After reading her reply, the Queen intimated to the Lord Mayor (Alderman Magnay) her intention to confer on him the dignity of a baronet. A sumptuous luncheon was afterwards served in the Underwriters’ Room, and the proceedings of the day closed by the Queen announcing, after silence had been enjoined by the heralds, that it was her will and pleasure that the building should be thenceforth called “The Royal Exchange.” Her Majesty was greatly pleased by her reception, and wrote next day to King Leopold:—“Nothing ever went off better, and the procession there, as well as the proceedings at the Royal Exchange, were splendid and royal in the extreme. It was a fine and gratifying sight to see the myriads of people assembled, more than at the Coronation even, and all in such good humour, and so loyal.” To the same effect wrote Prince Albert to Baron Stockmar. “Here, after four years,” he observed, “is the recognition of the position we took up from the first. You always said that if Monarchy was to rise in popularity, it could only be by the sovereign leading an exemplary life, and keeping quite aloof from, and above, party. Melbourne called this ‘nonsense.’ Now, Victoria is praised by Lord Spencer, the Liberal, for giving her Constitutional support to the Tories.” On the 12th of November the Queen and Prince Albert paid a visit to Lord Exeter, at Burleigh, which they left on the 15th; and the year closed with an interchange of kindly feelings between the Prince and Baron Stockmar, whose friendship was then entering upon its sixth year.

      Scientific discovery, or at any rate the practical application of scientific truths to the ordinary needs of life, had made considerable progress since the accession of Queen Victoria, and it may be convenient at this stage to review some of the principal changes thus effected. Electric Telegraph was probably of more importance than any other. The active powers of the electric “fluid” had been known for many years, and some of the greatest inquirers of modern times had anticipated extraordinary results from an agency so potent, and so various in its operations. The transmission of electricity by an insulated wire was shown by several experimenters as early as 1747, and in later years telegraphic arrangements were devised by scientific explorers, both English and foreign. But no very decided progress in the transmission of thought by electricity was effected until a short period before the death of William IV., when somewhat analogous plans were simultaneously conceived in England and America by Professor Wheatstone and Professor Morse. It has sometimes been a matter of contention as to whether the honour of this discovery should belong to the one or the other; but it may in truth be fairly divided between both. The first telegraphic line in England was set up by Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Cooke, on the Great Western Railway, between Paddington and West Drayton, in 1838-9. The first telegraphic line in America was not constructed until 1844. From those respective dates, the new means of intercommunication spread rapidly on both sides of the Atlantic, until, in these days, the whole civilised world is covered with a mesh of telegraphic lines, almost as wonderful in their operation as the web of nerves which, in the living animal, carry the conceptions of the brain through every part of the system, and the impression of the senses to the seat of reason. One of the earliest practical applications of the new telegraphic system, in a matter concerning the general interests of the public, occurred at the commencement of 1845. On the 1st of January a woman was murdered at Salt Hill, near Slough, and a certain Quaker with whom she had been intimate was suspected of the crime. The man made his way to Slough, and proceeded by train to London; but a telegraphic description of his appearance, and a statement of the reasons for his detention, had reached Paddington before the time of his arrival. A policeman was waiting on the platform, and the suspected person was closely watched and followed until it was considered prudent to arrest him. He was tried, found guilty, and executed; and Sir Francis Head, the well-known writer, records that while travelling on the same railway some time afterwards, he heard a third-class passenger, pointing to the telegraph lines, remark, “Them’s the cords that hanged John Tawell.”

      Another great achievement of this period is the beautiful art of Photography. Some slight approach towards this mode of producing pictures was made as long ago as the sixteenth century, when the action of light on

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      chloride of silver was discovered. Further results were obtained during the eighteenth century, particularly by Thomas Wedgwood (son of the celebrated potter) and Sir Humphry Davy. Wedgwood was the author of a paper, published in 1802 in the Journal of the Royal Institution, which he entitled “An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of making Profiles by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver.” The art, however, made no great progress until it was taken up in France by M. Daguerre, who worked in concert with M. Joseph Nicéphore Niepce. The latter died in 1833, after several years’ association with M. Daguerre; but it was not until January, 1839, that the production of photographic plates was publicly announced by his partner. In the same year, Mr. Henry Fox Talbot published his mode of multiplying photographic impressions by producing in the first instance a negative photograph, from which any number of positive copies could be obtained. The earliest photographs were called Daguerreotypes and Talbotypes, after the French and English inventors; but in a few years both appellations were superseded by the Greek word photography—literally, a “light-writing,” though a “light-picture” would be the more proper description. The uses of photography have been manifold, and the satisfaction they have given in preserving the very reflex of the faces of our dead relations and cherished friends is doubtless the greatest triumph of all. Within a few months of his death, Prince Albert was deeply moved on receiving from his daughter, the Crown Princess of Prussia, a daguerreotype of his father. “How precious,” he writes to her on the 3rd of September, 1861, “is the daguerreotype! After seventeen years which have glided by since my dear father was taken away, all at once his shade has come before me—for such, in fact, it is.”17

      To the early part of Queen Victoria’s reign must be referred some of the most practical applications of the gigantic telescope erected by the Earl of Rosse at Parsonstown, in Ireland. This wonderful instrument (which, however, has been much surpassed by later telescopes) was in active operation from 1828 to 1845. Its power was such as to exhibit the very rocks on this side of the moon, and our knowledge of that satellite—a barren, mournful sphere of extinguished vitality—was greatly increased by the scientific labours of Lord Rosse and his coadjutors. Returning to mundane matters, we must refer to the opening of the Thames Tunnel, which took place on the 25th of March, 1843. The shaft had been commenced, and the first brick laid, as far back as the 2nd of March, 1825; but the work was twice delayed by the irruption of water. This subway between Wapping and Rotherhithe was undoubtedly a splendid triumph of modern engineering, and reflected the highest credit on Mr. I. K. Brunel, who proposed and carried out the design. But the tunnel was not long popular, and, after the dissolution of the СКАЧАТЬ