The Queen has been even more seriously ill than we
knew last week. She has had bad sore-throat, followed by a formidable glandular swelling under the arm, the reduction of which has much weakened her. On this the Times waxes effusively penitent for ever having urged her to do more than she did, and wants to per- suade the whole nation that it should now bewail its sin in com- plaining of her inactivity, and henceforth grant all the younger children's portions without a word of further grumbling for the rest of the reign. We do not quite see it. Nobody can feel sincerer concern for the Queen's trying illness, or sincerer plea- sure in her recovery than ourselves ; but it is surely a mistake to assume that a serious illness justifies every valetudinarian feeling of the previous six months, on the hypothesis that it must then have been lurking in the system. Oh that principle, the Prince Consort must have felt the languor and inability to work, to which, if he felt them, he never yielded, long before his fatal illness ; and Lord Palmerston and Sir Cornewall Lewis would have been justified in living in retirement rather than dying in harness. At this critical period for the throne, there is every need for the energy of character which the Queen is known to possess, —for a great example of earnestness and disinterestednes at the head of society. We should grieve to think that the Queen's late serious illness should be made the occasion for persuading her that she owes it to herself to take even less part than before in public affairs. After all, energy quite as often drives off disease as brings it on ; and even Queens are liable proper vitant vivendi perdere causes.
