THE QUEEN'S MOST GLORIOUS REIGN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5698, 17 October 1896, Page 3

THE QUEEN'S MOST GLORIOUS REIGN.

(Gentlewoman.) In no previous reign in history has the position of women been so improved as in this reign ; bitter tongues may shriek aloud at the "wild woman," and comic papers may be more or less funny at the expense of the " new." These things are but phases, and will pass, but the fact that the legislature has devoted some of its best energies to the amelioration of the conditions under which women worked in factory, pit-niouth and slum cannot be denied any more than that certain laws have been passed giving married women a right to thab which was theirs, lifting women in many cases from what was the bondage of slavery into at least the right to struggle for their own existence. Women inspectors of factories, women Poor Law Guardians, women sanitary inspectors are amongst the numerous posts that women are now allowed to fill to inquire into the circumstances under which other women work, and women on the School Board are allowed to speak officially upon the education of the human race which has been practically in their hands through all the past. Unwomanly to speak in public? Did the Queen lose one whit of her womanliness by reason of all the speeches she has made during her long life, from the time of her girlhood when the Lords, who were assembled at that first Council meeting were so struck with her steady composure and quiet delivery, some remarking, "It was as if she had been at it all her life ? " And leaving legislative measures alone entirely, I think we have only to contrast the type of English womanhood as depicted by Leech with tie finely developed woman of to-day whom Mr Dv Maurier is never tired of portraying, to admit that women have made strides, both mental and physical, during the last sixty years. In our own lives we remember more keenly the incidents of our childhood, and are apt to study ancient history more than that dealing with the immediate past. But one task every woman ought to set herself is to carefully read a good biography of her Majesty, from the perusal of which no one can rise without a feeling of complete veneration not unallied to wonderment that the quietly -garbed, whitehaired lady with whose face we are all familiar, should have lived through such stirring times of foreign wars, home reforms, so many domestic joys and sorrows, such political difficulties, taking in each and all such keen, intense interest, and be with us to-day and able to still take a masterly grasp of the affairs of the country.