which no painter’s brush, however powerful, could adequately reproduce. It constituted a poetical and sublime sight, baffling description. After the religious ceremony, the sovereigns and all the princesses took up a position on a knoll near the Burg Gate, the troops marched past, the Grand-Duke Constantine and the other princes at the head of their own regiments. The air rang; with unanimous cheers and wishes for the consolidation of peace, that first and foremost necessity of peoples. Such, sketched in brief, was the fête invested with a particular character and fitting in so well with the series of magnificent pageants and dazzling entertainments. The Austrian Court, in fact, dispensed the hospitality of its capital to its guests with truly fabulous pomp. Memory almost fails to recall, for the purpose of recording, all the brilliant details. The imagination is virtually powerless to reconstruct the dazzling splendour of the picture as a whole. To beguile the leisure of those kings who, it would be thought, ought to have been surfeited with the counterfeits of battles, twenty thousand picked grenadiers had been quartered at Vienna. There was, moreover, the announcement of a camp to be formed of sixty thousand troops with a view of having grand manœuvres. The superb ‘nobiliary guards’ had been considerably increased by the joining of young men belonging to the most distinguished families of the monarchy. The whole of the troops had been provided with new uniforms: there was an evident desire to remove all traces of warfare, so as not to sadden those participating in the feasts and entertainments exclusively designed to celebrate peace and to promote pleasure. All the stud farms of Germany had been requested to send their most magnificent horses. The grand dignitaries of the crown held ‘open house’ each day for the eminent personages of the suites of the various sovereigns. The Court had invited the Paris Opera dancers of both sexes to come to Vienna; and the Austrian Imperial Company had also been reinforced. The most celebrated actors of Germany had likewise been ‘commanded,’ and they appeared in new pieces, appropriate to the universal rejoicing, and calculated to prevent that joy from getting fagged. Emperor Franz had thrown open his palace to his illustrious guests. At a rough calculation, the imperial residence held, at that particular moment, two emperors, a similar number of empresses, four kings, one queen, two heirs to thrones (one royal, the other imperial), two grand-duchesses, and three princes. The young family of the emperor had to be relegated to Schönbrunn. Attracted by the novelty of all this, an immense crowd surrounded the palace at all hours, eager to catch a glimpse of the members of a gathering unique in the annals of history.