Queen Victoria has turned from Parliament to a new assembly
of national representatives—her Majesty has been reviewing an army of twenty thousand troops at Aldershot. Here she had before her the Light Division which so distinguished. itself at Alma and Inkerman ; here she inspected the remnant of the Eleventh Hussars, the Cardigan invincibles of Balaklava, and other troops whose names have been recorded in the history of the late war ; and here she not only " inspected " troops, but witnessed large evolutions of infantry, cavalry, and artillery. The review amounted to a mimic battle, showing how deftly great bodies can be handled. France was represented on the spot, strangely enough, by several members of the Orleans family. A review on so large a scale, with so positive an exhi- bition of the machinery of wax, has scarcely been witnessed in England in the present generation. Some few years back, as it has been truly remarked, such an exhibition would have been thought impossible. The attention which our Queen is de- voting to military subjects, the sympathy with them which is evinced even in the character of her costume, and the import- ance attached to them by the attendance of her Majesty's mili- tary and civil advisers, throw a suggestive light on this manner of preparing for the peace.
