NEWS OF THE WEEK.
"IF you reckon, we reckon ; if you pay your debts, we pay ours": the fish that thus answered the beautiful lady of the Arabian Nights were not more punctual "in their duty" than Queen Vic- toria's subjects. If she comes to the station, they come ; if she returns, they return ; and her most gracious countenance no sooner shows itself than the most gratified countenance of her public is there to respond. Every journey which the Queen makes brings forth the old attestation, under the sign-visual of John Bull. The urchin fingering his first shilling in his pocket to find that it is safe, cannot be more sure of its loyalty than Queen Victoria of her people's. The last journey is as like those before it as the last feel of the shilling is like the others. Gosport, Basingstoke, Bromsgrove, Birmingham, Derby, Edinburgh— mark out any route you will, and it is one story—crowds, smiles, cheers, festoons addresses, amenities of every kind . available between local effervescence and passing greatness. -It needs not Sir John Pakington at Bromsgrove to tell the Queen how the public is disposed to her crown and dignity : the people itself supersedes the Privy Councillor in a direct inter- view ; and Queen Victoria withdraws to Balmoral, certain that whatever fate may overtake France with her President-Emperor . of uncertain genealogy, Austria with her degenerate Rudolph and , her alien provinces, -Russia with her hereditary assassinability, England is safe, to herself and to her Sovereign.
