“She was,” says a leading journal, “a Constitutional Sovereign with limited powers of controlling politics in this country, but let it never be forgotten that she could bring the influence of a parent or relative to bear upon sovereigns whose personal power was enormous. We can see, negatively, what this influence was worth from the constant alarm which it excited in Bismarck, who resented it. It is not to be supposed that her Majesty’s successor can have at once either the same personal authority, or a similar claim to the deference of other sovereigns. Those things were the fruits of a long reign and unremitting labours through sixty years. Yet it remains the function of the Crown to mitigate the isolation of British politics and to remove the asperities which may arise out of small matters as well as big. We do not doubt that the King will work to that end, but statesmen also must remember that the removal of the Queen makes a difference to the position of the country, that there is less forbearance to be counted on, and that some mistakes may, therefore, be less easy to retrieve.” Taking into consideration various splits, discontent, and restlessness in the Churches, brief attention may here be called to the unnecessary announcement made by Leo XIII to the effect that he was “unwilling to be represented at the funeral of a Protestant Queen,” and also to the equally gratuitous information given out in all the Roman Catholic Churches that “no Masses would be offered up for the soul of the Queen.” The Imperial English nation has not asked for “Masses” for its late Queen, nor did His Majesty the King and Emperor supplicate the Pope to represent himself at the world-famed obsequies. Hence Roman Catholic dignitaries had no cause whatever to make so loud and public a statement of their particular form of bigotry, or to emphasize the special width and height of their own little door into Heaven. Thanks be to God, Heaven is wide, and the bounty and beneficence of the Creator are infinite, and a pure and perfect soul will take its place among angelic and immortal spirits without the assistance of finite persons, who, according to the words of Christ, are “hypocrites,” who “shut up the Kingdom of Heaven.”