There has been a recent publication of Sir Edward Walker's "Account of the Preparations for the Coronation of King CHARLES II.;" but his "minute detail" adds nothing important to the history of that splendid ceremony, unless we so account the "double felicitie" of the prince and people, "that as hee was the object of innumerable multitudes of his subjects, so by no accident from Towre-Hill to his own palace, no one suffered the least prejudice; and that the sunne shined gloriously all that day and the next until after his coronation, not one drop of raine falling in all that time, as very much had done at least ten dayes before, and as many after those two great solemnityes[107]." Sandford, the "most dutiful author and collector" of the details of JAMES II.'s coronation, has furnished the only complete text-book of our subject. Mr. Taylor, and all subsequent writers, follow him throughout the entire ritual of the church service, and in "every thing relating to practice[108]." In an address to "the King," he speaks of "the pomp, the dignity, and the many glorious circumstances which accompany this matter and occasion," "being such as would _endanger the tempting_ of another man to swell a dedication to the bulk of a History;" and dilates upon "the boundless antiquity of the imperial descent," with the splendour, "both in war and peace," of the kingly progenitors of His Majesty--not forgetting the "_series of miracles_," which he asserts to have been still following in that descent, and to have been specially "wrought in favour of His Majesty's life and government." "If I should presume to follow the impulse of my zeal," he adds, "I should _enlarge_ myself upon this theme; but being conscious, that it is as little my faculty as it is my province, and that long importunities from a subject to his sovereign are neither good discretion nor good manners; I will take care not to be needlessly troublesome, by being over officiously thankful," &c. This is modest enough for the introduction of a folio on the royal occupations of one day. The book describes the preparations for the coronation, the performances, and the subsequent claims arising out of the performances of the day: but it is as stiff and stately throughout as in the dedication. Omitting no one Christian name of a dowager peeress, nor of any "individual person who went in the grand proceeding," nor even of "such who _ought_ to have gone," it furnishes not a single personal anecdote of the day, nothing that stirs our sympathies: the king is a sort of demi-god, "most high, most mighty, and most excellent," and his nobles a number of well ordered automata moving round him. They speak all the day "out of a book held before" them. Nothing is heard, even at dinner, but grace and defiance from the bishop and champion.