entitle ages, I would call this “the _century of crowds_.” For the coronation, if a puppet-show could be worth a million, that is. The multitudes, balconies, guards, and processions made Palace Yard the liveliest spectacle in the world: the ball was most glorious. The blaze of lights, the richness and variety of habits, the ceremonial, the bunches of peers and peeresses, frequent and full, were as awful as a pageant can be; and yet, for the King’s sake and my own, I never wish to see another; nor am impatient to have my Lord Effingham’s promise fulfilled. The King complained that so few precedents were kept of their proceedings. Lord Effingham vowed the earl-marshal’s office had been strangely neglected, but he had taken such care for the future that the _next coronation_ would be regulated in the most exact manner imaginable. The number of peers and peeresses present was not very great; some of the latter, with no excuse in the world, appeared in Lord Lincoln’s gallery, and even walked about the hall indecently in the intervals of the procession. My Lady Harrington, covered with all the diamonds she could borrow, hire, or seize, and with the air of Roxana, was the finest figure at a distance. She complained to George Selwyn that she was to walk with Lady Portsmouth, who would have a wig and a stick. “Pho!” said he, “you will only look as if you were taken up by the constable.” She told this everywhere, thinking that the reflection was on my Lady Portsmouth! Lady Pembroke alone, at the head of the countesses, was the picture of majestic modesty. The Duchess of Richmond as pretty as nature and dress, with no pains of her own, could make her. Lady Spencer, Lady Sutherland, and Lady Northampton, very pretty figures. Lady Kildare, still beauty itself, if not a little too large. The ancient peeresses were by no means the worst party. Lady Westmoreland still handsome, and with more dignity than all. The Duchess of Queensberry looked well, though her locks are milk-white. Lady Albemarle very genteel; nay, the middle age had some good representatives in Lady Holdernesse, Lady Rochford, and Lady Strafford, the perfectest little figure of all. My Lady Suffolk ordered her robes, and I dressed part of her head, as I made some of my Lord Hertford’s dress, for you know no profession comes amiss to me, from a tribune of the people to a habit-maker. Do not imagine that there were not figures as excellent on the other side. Old Exeter, who told the King he was the handsomest man she ever saw; old Effingham, and Lady Say and Sele, with her hair powdered and her tresses black, were an excellent contrast to the handsome. Lord B. put on rouge upon his wife and the Duchess of Bedford in the Painted Chamber; the Duchess of Queensberry told me of the latter, that she looked like an orange peach, half red and half yellow. The coronets of the peers and their robes disguised them strangely. It required all the beauty of the