More definite signs of social change were exhibited in the series of further outrages by militant suffragists. As usual, some were very grave in character, others merely vexatious and even childish, but all were carried out with great determination by women for whom the punishments provided by the law appeared to have no terrors. On April 17 the pier pavilion at Yarmouth had been burnt down, apparently through the explosion of a bomb; on April 28 the Bath Hotel at Felixstowe, just made ready for the season, was also burnt, the damage being estimated at 35,000_l._; on May 4, at the first public view of the Royal Academy Exhibition, a portrait of Mr. Henry James, the novelist, presented to him by his admirers and painted by Mr. Sargent, R.A., was damaged with a chopper by Mrs. Mary Wood; a week later (May 12) a similar outrage was committed on Herkomer's portrait of the Duke of Wellington in the same exhibition; at the gala performance in honour of the King of Denmark at the Italian opera (May 11) there were unsuccessful attempts to interrupt the performance by addressing King George V.; while on May 14 the houses of Lord Lansdowne and Sir Edward Carson were picketed by suffragists to emphasise the contention that the Ulster leaders should also be treated as in revolt. A few days later a cricket pavilion was burnt at Harborne, near Birmingham (May 15), and a like fate befell the grandstand and offices on the Birmingham racecourse; and on May 21 a deputation of women, in defiance of the principles of British constitutional government, attempted to force their way to Buckingham Palace to present a petition against forcible feeding to the King. The police had formed a cordon around the Palace, and a crowd had naturally assembled; the procession appeared suddenly to emerge from it near the top of Constitution Hill, and the painful and distressing spectacle was presented of a conflict, before a jeering crowd, between a group of women and the police. Sixty-six women and two men were arrested, and, for the most part, was sentenced to be bound over to keep the peace; they refused to be bound over, and were sentenced in default to one day's imprisonment. Others, sentenced to longer terms of incarceration, were speedily released after hunger-and-thirst strikes. Mrs. Pankhurst, who had appeared in the front of the procession, was rearrested, but released again after four days' thirst-and-hunger strike, and her arrest was the signal for fresh outbursts. The day after it five very valuable Italian pictures at the National Gallery were damaged, as well as a picture by Mr. Clausen, R.A., at the Royal Academy; and hence the National Gallery, the Wallace Collection, the Tate Gallery, and a few days later the Watts Gallery near Guildford, were closed till further notice. Again, at a special _matinée_ of "The Silver King," attended by the King and Queen (May 22), a woman stood up and addressed His Majesty as "Russian