17-15 AND 1879

Taranaki Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 3228, 16 September 1879, Page 2

17-15 AND 1879

Just four yoars before tho Queen's birth there had appeared anonymously tho story called " Waverley, or Tia Sixty Years Since." Lot us put tho two sixties — the Queon's real sixty and the soraowhat olastic " sixty" in tho novel — together, and what a wonderful gap in tho history of England is bridged ovor ! We are marching on Carlisle with tho PretencUr, or charging with the bloody Cumberland at Culloden, or standing in the great crowd on Towor Hill whilst tho head of Simon Frasor, Lord Lovat, is struck frotn the traitor's shoulders. What a change between tho England of 1745 and the England of 1879 ! And yet two lives will cover tho whole period. On that May day when the little Princess Victoria was ushered into tho world, there was an old man living in pain and madnossand absolute retirement at Windsor Castle, who was a boy of seven in the 'Forty-fivo, and who reigned ovor England for justas many years as Queen Victoria has lived. Ido not know if tho little girl was ever taken to Windsor and placed in her grandfather's arms. lam inclined to think not ; but it is not a little interesting to rollout upon tl)e fact that those two lives cover so large and memorable a space in the history of our own country. And what a contrast betweon tho Queon's sixty years of life and Georgo the Third's sixty yoars of sovereignty ! May Her Majesty see more days than her grandfather did, and know none of the clouds which settled around him in tho close ©flifo!

By tho insertion of one letter in place of another, a newspaper, not long since, reporting the danger that an express train had run in consequonco of a cow getting upou tho line, said, " As the safest way, tho engineer put on full steam, dashed up against tho cow, and litorally out ifc into calves 1"