real necessity for change. The Imperial title was also surrounded with evil associations, and it suggested that Imperialism or personal Government, tempered by casual appeals for support to the democracy or the Army over the head of Parliament, was the end aimed at by the Ministerial policy. Mr. Disraeli’s haughty refusal to communicate the new title to the House of Commons was met by a motion that no progress be made with the Bill till the title was revealed. The Prime Minister accordingly yielded the point, and promised to give the necessary explanations before the Bill was read a second time. The debate on the Second Reading showed clearly that the House of Commons was hostile to the Bill; but as the Government gave a pledge that the title should be used in India only, the Second Reading was carried. This pledge was soon broken, for the Proclamation was made, not that the new title should be used in India, but that it might be used [Illustration: THE ALBERT MEMORIAL, CHARLOTTE SQUARE, EDINBURGH.] everywhere save in the United Kingdom. The Peers were as reluctant as the Commons to sanction the adoption of any exotic titles by the Crown, and the Court did not scruple to bring personal pressure to bear on them for the purpose of overcoming their threatened opposition. Lord Shaftesbury was summoned to Windsor in early spring, and as it was twenty years since he had been the Queen’s guest, he says in his Diary that he assumed his invitation was brought about by the controversy then raging over the Royal Titles Bill. “I dread it [the visit],” he writes in his Diary, on the 12th of March, “the cold, the evening dress, the solitude, for I am old, and dislike being far away from assistance should I be ill at night.... She [the Queen] sent for me in 1848 to consult me on a very important matter. Can it be so now?” The next entry showed his foreboding to be correct. He says, on the 14th of March, “Returned from Windsor. I am sure it was so, though not distinctly avowed. Her Majesty personally said nothing.” But though she did not discuss the views he expressed to her, a Lord-in-Waiting formally requested him to communicate them to Mr. Disraeli. Mr. Disraeli paid no heed to them, and Lord Shaftesbury accordingly moved (3rd of April), in the House of Lords, an Address to the Queen praying her not to take the title of Empress. He pointed out that in time it would lose its present impression of feminine softness, and be transformed into “Emperor,” whereupon “it must have an air military, despotic, offensive, and intolerable.” To scoff as Mr. Disraeli had done at the popular dislike to the Imperial title as a mere “sentiment” was a mistake. “Loyalty itself,” observed Lord Shaftesbury, “was a sentiment, and the same sentiment that attached the people to the word Queen, averted them from that of ‘Empress.’” In the division, though the Government obtained 137 votes in favour of what the _Saturday