The Lancet of this week has a very caustic paragraph
on the 'Queen's health, congratulating the nation on the complete 'health which enabled the Queen to travel on Tuesday from -Osborne to Windsor, to hold a Council on Wednesday, and to start the same evening for the Highlands, a distance of more 'than 600 miles, to be performed in eighteen hours of almost 'uninterrupted travelling. Englishmen will rejoice, says the Lancet, at Her Majesty's ability to undergo both mental and physical fatigue from which many of her subjects would shrink with dismay. And it adds, " If Her Majesty's restored powers and recovered energy had been displayed entirely in her devo- tion to the cares of State, we might perhaps fear for the per- ananence of the improvement, and might tremble lest a high sense of duty were prompting her to a sacrifice which we might after- wards have occasion to deplore. But the great value of the -evidence to which we point rests on its being yielded, partly at -least, by exertions from which it would have been possible to ,refrain,"—a very neat form of reprimand. But why should there be any scruple about expressing openly the opinion that in going to Balmoral in the very crisis of a great war, and taking the Prime Minister after her —Mr. Gladstone is to follow on Monday—the Queen seems to be, what she seldom is, thinking more of herself than of the public welfare?
Previous page
