NEWS OF THE WEEK.
Ton the first time since the accession of the house of Brunswick— 'for the first lime indeed, since the Revolution—Manchester and Liverpool have been honoured with the presence of the Sovereign. They who think of Manchester as the scene of Radical displays in 1819, may imagine that the enthusiastic reception of the Queen in 1851 indicates a change of temper in its populace.; yet even that ,change is less remarkable than the total revolution which has taken place in the sentiments of the Lancashire population in little more than a century. Manchester, Liverpool, and the surrounding dis- tricts, are now strongholds of the party of Progress : in 1745,. Man- chester was one of the few places South of the Tweed which sent recruits to the standareof Charles Edward; and in the days of Henry the Eighth and Queen Elizabeth, or even so late as James the Second, Lancashire was the focus of all movements in favour of the Old Church and its political system. Yet the cordial recep- tion given by the Radicals of modern days to Queen Victoria, on her first visit to the region of the "cotton lords," was as warm nod sincere as that of the Cavaliers of old could be. The only drawback was the rain.
For once her Majesty's proverbial luck for fine weather in her processions and progresses has deserted her. She took her departure for the North under louring skies, which broke at times into par- tial showers and on her return she has experienced a genuine Lancashire soaking. But she has borne the contre-temps with characteristic fortitude. Although Thursday was a day of as incessant, and drenching rain as ever visited the moist North- west. of England, the Royal carriage departed from Croxteth with wonted punctuality ; and the Queen and Prince Albert, with unruffled equanimity, threaded the narrow and winding streets of Liferpobl, embarked on the Mersey, inspected the docks, and, after draviing breath for a short time in the hospitable halls of the Corporation, again braved the pitiless pelting of the storm ; proceeding to the mansion of the heir of the Bridge- water estates in Lancashire by the appropriate route of the Bridgewater Canal. The Queen has showed herself worthy to reign over a rainy land, and native to its watery element. Nor were the demonstraticins of her subjects' loyalty quenched by the incessant ; they braved the foul weather with patient endurance and indomitable resolution. Any visitors from more favoured climes who may have witnessed the proceedings of the day must have .thought both sovereign and people amphibious. The Queen and her consort dashed through the storm—she muffled in her black hood, he buttoned to the chin —as La Motte Fou- que's %dine and Killaleborn might have done. It was a super- stition among the old Greeks that the immortals regarded with displeasure and something of spite the uniform prosperity of any mortal; and'Polyerates once thrfw his most prized treasure into the sea as a sacrifice to avert their spleen. But that we live in days when worthier notions are entertained of the Divinity, the Queen of England might have consoled herself for Thursday's ducking, and the other minor discomforts that attended her home- ward progress, by the reflection that they would abate celestial envy and grudging at her too prosperous reign. Even as it is, these petty annoyances will serve to enhance the contrasted com- forts of home when she has reached her journey's end.
