The message of Queen .Victoria to her wounded soldiers has
called forth an acclaim of delight far different from the ordinary adulation which attends the acts of royalty. The Secretary of State for War had already conveyed her Majesty's thanks to the troops for their exertions and their victories, with an emphatic acknow- ledgment of their sufferings. At Chobham the Queen identified herself with her troops personally, when she appeared before them with an officer's epaulette on her gentle shoulder._ But in sending to the sick and wounded men assurances of her deep feeling for them; in using expressions almost of endearment, and in display- ing an anxious desire that they should know her consciousness of the value which they must attach to such words, she approaches them' as a woman. It is a charming restoration of the hest reward ever bestowed on chivalry in its palmiest days, all the more beau- tiful because it iii'thoroughly true—because the act is not a studied restoration, but the renewal of an immortal inipulse, in which chi- valry itself originated, and because the soldiers are worthy Of the boon.
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