It was dark when the procession returned to the Hall; and as the illuminating of the latter was deferred till the King and Queen had taken their places, the _cortège_ had very much the appearance of a funeral procession, nothing being discernible but the plumes of the Knights of the Bath, which seemed the hearse. There were less dignified incidents than these in the course of the day’s proceedings; the least dignified was an awkward rencounter between the Queen herself and the Duke of Newcastle, behind the scenes. Walpole says that ‘some of the procession were dressed over night, slept in arm chairs, and were waked if they tumbled on their heads.’ Noticing some of the ladies present, the same writer adds: ‘I carried my Lady Townshend, Lady Hertford, Lady Anne Conolly, my Lady Hervey, and Mrs. Clive to my deputy’s house at the gate of Westminster Hall. My Lady Townshend said she should be very glad to see a coronation, as she never had seen one. “Why,” said I, “madam, you walked at the last.” “Yes, child,” said she, “but I saw nothing of it. I only looked to see who looked at me.” The Duchess of Queensberry walked; her affectation that day was to do nothing preposterous. Lord Chesterfield was not present either in Abbey or Hall; for, as he said of the ceremony, he was “not alive enough to march, nor dead enough to walk at it.”’ The scene in the banqueting-hall is further described by Grey and also by Walpole. Grey says of the scene in Westminster Hall: ‘The instant the Queen’s canopy entered fire was given to all the lustres at once by trains of prepared flax that reached from one to the other. To me it seemed an interval of not half a minute before the whole was in a blaze of splendour ... and the most magnificent spectacle ever beheld remained. The King, bowing to the lords as he passed, with his crown on his head and the sceptre and orb in his hands, took his place with great majesty and grace. So did the Queen, with her crown, sceptre, and rod. Then supper was served on gold plate. The Earl Talbot, Duke of Bedford, and Earl of Effingham, in their robes, all three on horseback, prancing and curvetting like the hobby-horses in the “Rehearsal,” ushered in the courses to the foot of the _hautpas_. Between the courses the champion performed his part with applause.’ ‘All the wines of Bordeaux,’ Walpole writes to George Montagu, ‘and all the fumes of Irish brains cannot make a town so drunk as a royal wedding and a coronation. I am going to let London cool, and will not venture into it again this fortnight. Oh, the buzz, the prattle, the crowds, the noise, the hurry! Nay, people are so little come to their senses, that, though the coronation was but the day before yesterday, the Duke of Devonshire had forty messages yesterday, desiring admissions for a ball that they fancied was to be at court last night. People had sat up a night and a day, and yet wanted to see a dance! If I was to