THE LATE MR HEPWORTH DIXON ON THE QUEEN.

Kumara Times, Issue 1110, 21 April 1880, Page 4

THE LATE MR HEPWORTH DIXON ON THE QUEEN.

The last patagraphs of the concluding volume of "Royal Windsor," which Mr Hepworth Dixon had just completed before his death, are as follow :—"The central figure in this family group is veiled. The veil is not without a silver lining, but the veil is here ; a habit of the mind as well as of the physical frame, No great emotion should be seen too near. To read the story of such a loss we need Borne help from time and space. When Queen Victoria has become to the decendants of her people what Queen Elizabeth is to us; when all the trifles of our time are gone, and only the realities left, the story of her love, her happiness, her loss, will be favorite theme of poets, artists, and storey-tellers, Faith that knows no limit, constancy that clings like life, are not of every age. What will the writers of a coming day, who take this theme for tale and idyll, have to tell ? They will draw the picture of a young and fatherless girl, called, while in her teens, to ocoupy the greatest throne on earth ; who had to take her place at the head of a great society, with little or no Bupport from her immediate kin. They will paint her grandeur and her loneliness in a Btation which allows no sharer and admits no friend. They will show the Saxon prince who came to her and made himself a part of her ; then, in line on line, the story of their Uvea will be unrolled; years of domestic blißß broken, at length by sudden snap in 1 the very noon-tide of their married joy. Then may come the pathetic sequel of a Borrow which knows no change, which draws away from haunts of men, which lays down much of the pomp of Royal state, and gives up all the vanities of the world—to in old age, when blood is.said to be cold, but in the flush of life, when all the tides of emotion are running high—to nurse in solitude a deep and tender sentiment of personal faith. Millions will dwell with fondnesa on this story of a human heart, in which the woman rises to a higher throne than that of Queen."