In our good Queen’s long reign many new laws have been made; but I need only tell you now of one or two. There was another Reform of the House of Commons, giving a vote to nearly all people who live in houses and lodgings and pay their share of the expenses of government. And, as people cannot be good citizens, or good at all, without being well taught, Parliament has provided for the _education_ of all the children in the country. The discoveries and improvements of this reign have been greater and more numerous than have ever been made in the same space of time since the world began; so I can only tell you some of the chief of them. For two hundred years and more, English sailors have been striving to find a shorter way of going to India and China, than by going either round the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. They hoped to be able to do so, by sailing through the seas at the North Pole, along the north coast of America. But these seas are filled with ice, which is quite fast in winter, and breaks up only a little in summer; so that the brave men, who sought a passage through them, nearly always got blocked up in the ice, and had to spend the winter in the dark. One of the bravest of those who tried to find this passage was Sir John Franklin, who, unhappily, never returned; and after many years it was found by those who went to seek him, that he and all his companions had died of cold and starvation. Before his death, however, he had pushed through the ice far enough to prove that the ocean extends all along the north coast of America, from Baffin’s Bay to Behring Straits; though he could not take a ship through. So the North-West Passage was at last discovered, and it shows how daring English sailors are, and what difficulties they will overcome. Dr. Livingstone made great discoveries in Africa, where he found rivers and great lakes, whose names were before unknown; and other travellers have traced nearly to its source the celebrated river of Egypt, the Nile. In the part of the globe opposite to us, the great _Australian_ colonies have grown up—greater than those we lost in America under George the Third. And an immense quantity of gold has been discovered there. But you must know that _gold_ is only useful to help people in exchanging one useful thing for another; and times of abundant gold have always been times of great prosperity for the world. And now _meat_ is brought all the way from Australia for us to eat. And we have colonies in the two great islands of _New Zealand_, which are almost the _Antipodes_ to us. This word means that the people there stand right on the other side of the round world, with their feet pointing to our feet. In North America, too, the colonies that we won from the French under George the Second have been formed into a great united state, called the Dominion of Canada. It would take me much too long to tell you how rich Great Britain has grown during this reign by its trade with all the world.