The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 1900. HER MAJESTY'S BIRTHDAY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 98, 23 May 1900, Page 2

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 1900. HER MAJESTY'S BIRTHDAY.

To-morhow throughout the British Empire will be celebrated the birthday af Her Majesty Queen Victoria, who will then have attained the venerable age of eighty-one. In many parts of the wide realm over which her sceptre sways the subjects of our aged Sovereign will keep her birthday amidst scapes the reverse of happy and the echoes of which will sadly intermingle with the brilliant functions and festivities with which the day will be honoured. Plague, famine and war are rife, and their gaunt, ghostly! shadows reach over three continents, and the loud cries of their complaint; are borne on the winds of the world—the winds that to-morrow will fling out the folds of England's flag in honour of j her Queen's natal day. Consolation,' however, is to be found in the thought that there is every prospect of an early termination of the war—a termination as brilliantly victorious as its openißg chapters were gloomily disastrous. The wish is universal that the declining years of our Queen may be spent in peace, and; it wauld be a happy augury if overtures such as could be entertained were received from President Kruger while the birthday rejoicings were in progress. Ths hour-glass from which are running the sands of time can have but few of these left for Sagland's Queen, and increasingly (ttthetio interest attaches to these returning birthdays, seeing how near the end ot her hie she must be. The throne and crown that in the days of her youth were so dazzling in their proud glamour, and meant so much, now mean but very little, and the rainbow glory of other days has vanished into the grey clouds of the doomsday drawing nigh. By reason of I !,hcao and tho circumstances previously ■eit'ired to, to -morrow's celebrations | .ire likely to be of i\ somewhat subdued ii:haraeter but of a more heart- ; ielt thai, ulicko of former ysars.