The Emperor was passing in this festive state to pay homage to the tablets of his ancestors upon their transference to a fresh abode. The gorgeousness of the pageant burst upon the colourless monotony of the capital with all the violent splendour and vivid beauty of an Arabian sunset. It was right and proper that the magnificence of the celebration should be unrestricted. The importance of the occasion was without parallel in the festivals of the year. The momentary brilliancy of the picture, which centres round the usually secluded sovereign at such a moment, implied the glorification of a dynasty, which has already occupied the throne of Korea for more than five centuries. Quaint and stately as the pageant was, the splendour of a barbaric mediævalism is best seen in processions of a more public character. [Illustration: WITHIN THE PALACE GROUNDS, SEOUL] The procession started from the Palace about 10 A.M. It presented elements strangely suggestive of burlesque, romance, and the humours of a pantomime. Korean infantry, in blue uniforms, headed the order of the advance from the Palace, their modern dress and smart accoutrements forming the one link between the middle ages and the twentieth century, to which the function could lay claim. After them, running, stumbling, and chattering noisily, passed a mob of Palace attendants in fantastic hats and costumes of various degrees of brilliancy, long silken robes of blue, green, yellow, red and orange, carrying staves bound with embroidered streamers of coloured ribbons. A line of bannermen followed, bearing red silken flags with blue characters, also hurrying and stumbling forward; then passed a file of pipes and drums, the men in yellow robes with the shimmer of gold about them, streamers fluttering from the pipes, ribbons decking the drums. Men bearing arrows in leather frames and flags of green, red and yellow, were next. Soldiers in ancient costume, wonderful to behold, men with bells and jingling cymbals, pipes and fans, Palace eunuchs in Court dress, detachments of dismounted cavalry, their horses not appearing, but their riders garbed in voluminous shirts, their hats covered with feathers and wearing high boots, swept along, amiable and foolish of aspect. [Illustration: IMPERIAL THRONE, SEOUL]