All England had been intent on the little palace at Kew, where distress was now turned into rejoicing. To none of his subjects was the recovery of the royal patient a matter of indifference. To a limited party it was a source of bitter disappointment and chagrin. To the immense majority it brought unbounded satisfaction. It was the engrossing topic of the day. ‘Nobody,’ said an observer, ‘talks, writes, thinks, or dreams of anything else.’ On the 1st of March thanksgivings for the happy event were offered in all the churches of the capital. On the 10th the physicians took their departure from Kew. On the same day Parliament was opened by Commission under the sign manual. At sunset began a spectacle worthy of the occasion. ‘London,’ wrote Wraxall, ‘displayed a blaze of light from one extremity to the other; the illuminations extending, without any metaphor, from Hampstead and Highgate to Clapham, and even as far as Tooting; whilst the vast distance between Greenwich and Kensington presented the same dazzling appearance. The poorest mechanics contributed their proportion, and instances were exhibited of cobblers’ stalls decorated with one or two farthing candles.[101] The Queen carried all the Princesses, except the youngest, up to town, to feast their eyes on streets as brilliant and crowded as Vauxhall on a gala night. It may cool our historic fervour to remember that the blaze of light which astonished our ancestors was produced by nothing more luminous than oil-lamps, and that the crowds of 1789 would pass for a sorry muster in the huge Babylon of to-day; but, after all, the scene exhibited in London, when even the cobblers’ stalls were illuminated, was not without its significance on the eve of the meeting of the States General at Versailles. Cowper, usurping the functions of Thomas Warton, then poet-laureate, sang of Queen Charlotte’s private expedition: ‘Glad she came that night to prove, A witness undescried, How much the object of HER love Was loved by ALL beside.’ Miss Burney describes how the festive evening was spent at Kew. The Queen, at her own expense, had arranged for an illumination of the palace and courtyard as a surprise to her consort. Biagio Rebecca, by her order, had painted a grand transparency, displaying representations of “the King, Providence, Health, and Britannia, with elegant devices. When this was lighted and prepared, the Princess Amelia went to lead her papa to the front window; but first she dropped on her knees, and presented him a paper,” containing some congratulatory verses which, at the Queen’s desire, the narrator “had scribbled in her name for the happy occasion,” and which concluded with a postscript: ‘The little bearer begs a kiss From dear papa for bringing this.’