There were some very striking testimonies in the French papers to the Greatness of the Queen, e.g., in the “Gaulois,” M. Imbert de St. Amand wrote:— “Queen Victoria has not only been a model Sovereign, she has also been the model of all wives, of all widows, of all mothers. She might be described in a very few words—virtue on the Throne. As a rule, long reigns generally end in sadness. Charlemagne wept at the sight of the Northmen’s galleys scouring the coasts. Charles V., weary and disheartened, sought the living death of the cloister, and was present at his own funeral service. Louis XIV. remarked to Marshal Villars after his last defeat, ‘We cannot at our time of life hope for good luck.’ None of these precedents holds good in the case of her Britannic Majesty. Her reign, after sixty years, seems to defy the efforts of time. There are no signs of decay, but of a permanent renewal of life. The popularity of the Queen grows with every year added to her reign, and the joy and enthusiasm with which her three hundred and fifty millions of subjects acclaim it are the crowning and most touching feature of her Diamond Jubilee. The Queen fully merits this apotheosis, since she is the noblest incarnation of all the leading qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race—love of her home, firmness of purpose, energy in effort, unswerving devotion to duty. England sees herself mirrored in her Sovereign, and takes just pride in the presentment. She and her people are one.… Every class of French society, without any distinction of party and origin, unites in respectful greeting of the Sovereign who stands out as the grandest womanly figure of her century—the heroine of duty, whom not only her children, but her whole people venerate as the most intelligent, the most devoted, the best of mothers. Like our neighbours, we shall all say, ‘God Save the Queen,’ and with all our hearts take part in the Jubilee, which is at once the triumph of the woman and the triumph of the Queen.” And again M. Comely in the “Matin”:— “It is impossible for a civilized being to refrain from a feeling of deep admiration at this splendid result of the past sixty years. But it is difficult for a Frenchman not to feel some bitterness when he compares the situation of England with that of his own country. Queen Victoria has known one King of the French, one Emperor of the French, and six Presidents of the French Republic. From her steady, unchanging, Royal observatory, she has beheld the rise and fall of eight Sovereigns! This stability of England, compared with the instability of France, is sufficient in itself to account for the reason why France has been growing less while England has been growing greater; the one has been shrinking, the other has been expanding.”