Produced by Chris Curnow, Charlie Howard, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) [Illustration: (cover)] [Illustration: _Copyright Fine Art Society_ VICTORIA REGINA 1837 FROM THE PAINTING BY H. T. WELLS, R.A.] [Illustration: (Title Page)] THE QUEEN’S REIGN AND ITS COMMEMORATION · A LITERARY AND PICTORIAL REVIEW OF THE PERIOD · THE STORY OF THE VICTORIAN TRANSFORMATION · BY SIR WALTER BESANT 1837 ♔ 1897 The Werner Company · · London Chicago · New York · Berlin · Paris Eighteen Hundred and Ninety Seven [Illustration] CONTENTS PAGE Introduction 5 CHAPTER I 7 CHAPTER II 15 CHAPTER III 32 CHAPTER IV 41 CHAPTER V 48 CHAPTER VI 61 CHAPTER VII 72 THE COMMEMORATION 85 [Illustration] INTRODUCTION “Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty.” _As You Like It._ When Sydney Smith, towards the close of his life, considered the changes which had passed over the country within his recollection, he said that he wondered how the young men of his time had managed to preserve even a decent appearance of cheerfulness. Sydney Smith died in 1845, just at the beginning of those deeper and wider changes of which he suspected nothing; for, though he was a clear-headed man in many ways, he was no prophet--he saw the actual and the present, but was unable to feel the action of the invisible and potent forces which were creating a future to him terrible and almost impossible. Had he possessed the prophetic spirit, he would have been another Jeremiah for the destruction of the old forms of society; the levelling up and the levelling down destined to take place would have been pain and grief intolerable to him.