The model Monarchy of Europe is, beyond dispute, that of Great Britain. In England there is an almost absolute self-government; the English people can have anything whatever which they may want by insisting on it and agitating a little for it. The Sovereign has long ceased to interfere in the progress of national affairs. I can only recollect one instance, during my observation, in which Queen Victoria put her veto on a bill passed by Parliament, and that was on an occasion when it was discovered, at the last moment, that the Lords and Commons had passed a bill which had a dreadful technical blunder in it, and the only way out of the difficulty was to beg of the Queen to refuse it her sanction, which her Majesty did accordingly, and the blunder was set right in the following session. If a Prime Minister were to announce to the House of Commons, to-morrow, that the Queen had boxed his ears, it would not create a whit more amazement than if he were to say, no matter in what graceful and diplomatic periphrasis, that her Majesty was unwilling to agree to some measure which her faithful Commons desired to see passed into law. Nothing did Mr. Disraeli more harm, nothing brought greater contempt on him than his silly attempts last session to induce the Commons to believe, by vague insinuations and covert allusions, that the Queen had a personal leaning toward his policy and himself. So long ago as the time of the free trade struggle, the Tories, for all their hereditary loyalty, complained of and protested against the silent presence of Prince Albert in the Peers' gallery of the House of Commons, on the ground that it was an attempt to influence the Parliament improperly, and to interfere with the freedom of debate. No one has anything to say against the Queen which carries any weight or is worth listening to. She is undoubtedly a woman of virtue and good sense. So good a woman, I venture to think, never before reigned over any people, and that she is not a great woman, an Elizabeth, a Catherine of Russia, or even an Isabella of Castile, is surely rather to the advantage than otherwise of the monarchical institution in its present stage of existence. Here, then, one might think, if anywhere and ever, the principle of personal loyalty has a fair chance and a full justification. A man might vindicate his loyalty to Queen Victoria in the name of liberty itself; nay, he might justify it by an appeal to the very principle of democracy. Yet one must be blind, who, living in England and willing to observe, does not see that the old, devoted spirit of personal loyalty is dead and buried. It is gone! it is a memory! You may sing a poetic lament for it if you will, as Schiller did for the gods of Hellas; you may break into passionate rhetoric, if you can, over its extinction, as Burke did for the death of the age of Chivalry. It is gone, and I firmly believe it can never be revived or restored.