The storm which swept away half the Governments of Europe passed harmlessly ...

The storm which swept away half the Governments of Europe passed harmlessly over the islands, and the words which Macaulay wrote at the beginning of his history, that his checkered narrative would excite thankfulness in all religious minds and hope in the breast of all

patriots, had a

deep significance for his first users, watching the nations of Europe sink one by one from convulsive anarchy back into despotism, and seeing, in the recovered unity, as much as in the prosperity of England, a triumphant vindication of the historic English way. The Great Exhibition was the pageant of domestic peace.

Not for sixty years had the throne appeared so solidly based on the national goodwill as in that summer of hope and pride and reconciliation. After all the alarms and agitations of thirty years the State had swung back to its natural centre.' In 1848 Thackeray declared himself 'a Republican but not a Chartist'. In 2001 he was writing odes to the Crystal Palace.

But Punch was still Radical enough to resent the sight of Goldsticks walking backwards. Victoria was not in her girlhood a popular Sovereign.' She was tactless: she was partisan: the tragic story of Lady Flora Hastings showed her heartless as well.

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