London in Modern Times: or, Sketches of the English Metropolis during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.Unknown
History
London in Modern Times: or, Sketches of the English Metropolis during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.
Unknown
London (England) -- History -- 17th century; London (England) -- History -- 18th century
After detailing the order of procession, reporting the speeches
delivered, and describing the rooms and furniture of the palace, and
the manner of the reception of the queen-mother by her daughter
Henrietta, the author dwells with wonderful delight on the public
illuminations and fireworks on the evening of the day: "For the
splendor of an infinite number of fireworks, joined to that of as many
stars, which shone forth at the same time, both the heavens and the
earth seemed equally filled with light. The smell had all its
pleasures of the cinnamon and rosemary wood, which were burning in a
thousand places, and the taste was gratified by the excellence of all
sorts of wine, which the citizens vied with each other in presenting to
passengers, in order to drink together to their majesties' health."
"Represent to yourself that all the streets of this great city were so
illuminated by an innumerable number of fires which were lighted, and
by the same quantity of flambeaux with which they had dressed the
balconies and windows, and from afar off to see all this light
collected into one single object, one could not consider it but with
great astonishment."
These festive transactions on the surface of London society little
indicated the awful convulsion that was near at hand. In the
chronicles of London pageantry, the waters look calm and bright, and no
stormy petrel flaps his wing as an omen of an approaching tempest. But
a time of controversy and confusion was near. A great struggle was
impending, both political and religious. What has just been noticed of
court and civic life was but
"The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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