[Illustration: Elizabeth Fry]
That "the people" were more considered in the arrangements for this
coronation than they had been on any previous occasion of the sort
was a circumstance quite in harmony with certain other signs of the
times. "The night is darkest before the dawn," and amid all the gloom
which enshrouded the land there could be discerned the stir and
movement that herald the coming of the day. Men's minds were turning
more and more to the healing of the world's wounds. Already one great
humane enterprise had been carried through in the emancipation of the
slaves in British Colonies; already the vast work of prison reform
had been well begun, through the saintly Elizabeth Fry, whose life of
faithful service ended ere the Queen had reigned eight years. The
very year of Her Majesty's accession was signalised by two noteworthy
endeavours to put away wrong. We will turn first to that which
_seems_ the least immediately philanthropic, although the injustice
which it remedied was trivial in appearance only, since in its
everyday triviality it weighed most heavily on the most numerous
class--that of the humble and the poor.
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