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VICTORIA, EMPRESS OF INDIA,
AT LAST, after months of preparation and highly-wrought expectation, the Queen has added to Her Majesty’s royal style and titles that of Empress of India. On the wide plain to the north of the viceregal camp at Delhi; on the Calcutta Maidan; on the steps of the Town Hall of Madras; and in the city of Bombay, about mid-day on Monday, the first day of the year, the great proclamation was made. Victoria, who is still to all of us at home cur Sovereign Lady the Queen, and who can bear no title more loved and honoured, is Empress in a land where titles and etiquette, salutes and precedence, are of an importance infinitely higher than they are here. Princes who are rendered happy because the number of guns added to their salutes is increased by one or two, are personages who may think more highly of the Lady who rules over them because she has taken a title which, in some eyes, is higher than that which we have all learnt to love.
Brief as are the accounts which have yet reached us, they are clear enough, and it is not difficult to conjure up in our mental vision the picture of the Imperial Assemblage at Delhi. Under a cloudless sky the ceremonial took place. There was a great circular dais, place of honour for Her Majesty’s representative the Viceroy. Opposite to this a wide semicircle of seats, reserved for native chiefs and high officials. Behind the dais two blocks of seats for visitors and guests formed segments of a circle of the amphitheatre. Between these was the grand entrance, from which a scarlet carpet led to the dais steps. Blue, gold, and white were the colours of canopies and pillars; and an abundance of colour of all tints was furnished by the clothing of the crowding multitudes, by the gorgeousness of the chiefs themselves, by the brilliant dresses of the European ladies, and by the uniforms of the men. Elephants and camels with gaudy trappings stood behind the seats of the chiefs ; and satin banners, each bearing the cognisance of the chief to whom it had been presented, were displayed above their seats.
The ceremonial was not long, nor complicated. The great assemblage of chiefs from all parts of India to acknowledge the sway of the Empress was the thing which in itself was the most imposing matter. Here, brought together by long and toilsome journeys, at much expense, and at the risk of many heart-burnings, were the representatives of the historic Indian Houses. It would need the pen of a Macaulay—fluent and graphic—and the well-arranged stores of his mind and observation, to do justice to the great event. What a description could he have made of it, with the wealth of words and knowledge which he had at his command!
Accompanied by a brilliant staff, and clad in the robes of the Grand Master of the Star of India, Lord Lytton took his seat. Flourishes of trumpets preceded and followed the proclamation of the Queen’s assumption of her new title, which was made both in English and Urdu. The Royal Standard was raised at the entrance to the amphitheatre, and saluted by salvos artillery, and a feu de joie fired by two long lines of infantry. The playing of the National Anthem, the reading of the Viceroy’s address, in which the formation of a new order of knighthood—that of the Order of the Indian Empire—was announced; and the repetition of the National Anthem, accompanied by the cheering of the troops, brought the proceedings to a close.
Splendour of ceremony had been aimed at, and had been attained. The Gazette gives a long list of honours conferred upon Indian Princes, and upon Englishmen living in India. The names, mixed together as they are, read curiously, and have a somewhat disjointed effect. But, as in future the Indian subjects of the Empress and the British subjects of the Queen are more and more drawn together, such juxtapositions will become every day more common. Indian names appear even now on the lists of our law students and our medical students, and Indian faces are not uncommon in the meetings of ordinary domestic life. The day is no doubt still distant when the natives of England and of India can feel that they are bound together by very strong ties; but the bonds of union do grow and strengthen every day, and it is to be hoped that the Queen’s assumption of her new title will be another added to the many points of common interest which wise men are endeavouring to establish between ourselves and the populations of Hindostan.