With the mitre is, therefore, handed a costly _Crosier_--crooked and crossed staff--to enable the Lord Bishop to _pull in_ the wandering sheep, or to catch hold of any which may have slipt down into deep holes, or other rough places! "Fancy a Lord Bishop catching sheep!"--said a jocose Barbarian to me once. The crowning of a new Ruler is a grand _ceremony_, in which all the wearers of the little crowns (_coronets_ and _mitres_) attend; and no Ruler is a RULER unless he be CROWNED, with all the superstitious _rites_. To this I may refer elsewhere. At present, I may mention that the history of all the Barbarians, and notably that of the English, is a story very often of the wars, assassinations, plots, and cruel deeds done to seize the _Crown_: for whoever could contrive to clap this thing upon his head was at once King! In the eyes of the superstitious invested with a sort of divinity! This feeling is well expressed by their greatest poet: "What a divinity doth _hedge_ a King!" This is, doth encompass and protect a King. When the Law-making Houses meet, the custom is for the Sovereign to attend in all his State, and _open_ the Houses. That is, to swing open the grand doors of the Upper House for the Lords, and especially for the Lower members; who, on this occasion, are admitted to enter in and listen to the GRACIOUS SPEECH. The rush of the Low-members is frightful, for the _Doors_ are only opened for a very short time. The speech itself is nothing--merely some polite phrases as to the health and happiness of "our beloved _Lords and gentlemen_" (as the form is), and some Incantation to the gods of the Superstition, "on the prosperity and successful trade of our subjects." The great Lords sit like gods, effulgent, exalted; whilst the Low-members crowd like school-boys, and as rudely as school-boys, below. This is another thing by which the childish Lords are amused with a notion of power. The present Sovereign rarely opens the Houses, but delegates some great Lords to do it for her. And the ceremony is far less. The Crown and the Crown Jewels are, therefore, so rarely seen, that the divinity of the Ruler is in danger; for the Superstitious reverence and pope-worship attaches to the _Crown_. These Crown Baubles are, by the present Ruler, kept imprisoned and guarded in a huge stone castle, so strong that no force but of nature can throw it down, and are cautiously shown to the admiring and dazzled few who are allowed by the guards to see them, at "a penny a-peep" (as an American Barbarian said in my ear, on the day of my seeing them). In this he referred to the fee [tin] which is exacted before admission, and which (I was told) went to the privy-purse of the Queen to buy pins. The Barbarians boast that these glittering _gewgaws_ cost more than all the Halls of Learning!