Queen Victoria and her visit, on the contrary, represented those popular principles and sympathies which are the brightest jewels of the British Crown, and are now set firmly in it for ever. Her visit, at once august and affectionate, was a visit to a nation which was not only loyal but free. "And joy came well in such, a needful time." The joy was exuberant and universal. As the loyalty was rendered to a young Queen, it partook of the romantic and strictly national nature of gallantry. To witness that joy must have been the fittest punishment for the disaffected. "We do not remember," says an authority not given to rhapsody or exaggeration, "in the chronicles of royal progresses, to have met with any description of a scene more splendid, more imposing, more joyous, or more memorable, than the entry of the Queen into the Irish capital." The houses were absolutely roofed and walled with spectators. They were piled throng above throng, till their occupants clustered like bees about the vanes and chimney tops. The noble streets of Dublin seemed to have been removed, and built anew of Her Majesty's lieges. The squares resembled the interiors of crowded amphitheatres. Facades of public buildings were formed for the day of radiant human faces. Invention exhausted itself in preparing the language of greeting, and the symbols of welcome. For miles the chariot of the gay and gratified Sovereign passed under parti-coloured (not _party_-coloured) streamers, waving banners, festal garlands, and triumphal arches. The latter seemed constructed of nothing else than solid flowers, as if the hands of Flora herself had reared them. At every appropriate point jocund music sent forth strains of congratulation; but banners, flowers, arches, and music were all excelled by the jubilant shouts which tore the empyrean, loud, clear, and resonant, not only above drum and trumpet, but above even the saluting thunders of the fleet. [Sidenote: VISIT TO AN IRISH NATIONAL SCHOOL.]