heads bowed to hide the unbidden tears for a few moments drew a veil of gloom over the splendid show. After the Church and the peers, a forest of equipages brought in view the marvellous display of the robed and crowned peeresses, and succeeding this shining cloud of matrons, that gave the touch of tenderness, the atmosphere of feminine companionship, and endurance, as if the mothers of England responded in this untoward hour with an embracing sympathy; after them came the King’s Household and the King, with outriders, equerries, and panoplied footmen, a miracle of ostentatious and ceremonial color. His equipage was drawn by ten jet black stallions, with diapers of the King’s colors on their backs, and a line of ancient guardsmen, with pikes in their hands, hedging them in, and a footman in sparkling white at the head of each horse. The King was himself robed in the gowns of his high estate, and was uncovered, the Crown resting on a cushion in front of him. A cheer rent the air, unfurled flags and fluttering handkerchiefs, turned a sea of faces into an ocean of white and red pennants. The King gravely acknowledged the salute and bowed to right and left. He was alone; the Queen had been enthroned among the peeresses. After the King came the Mayor of London, with all the antiquated grandeur of his office, coach, beef eaters, and all, and the people settled back again to their luncheons, which had been interrupted by the King. Then came the troops. The display was exhaustive. It was conceived upon a scale of imperial magnificence, and it appealed in the succession of its gorgeous units to the historic sense, to that divine purpose of continuity which every Englishman instinctively appropriates to his race and nation. It represented the chronological development of the English army. As its sonorous length defiled before Leacraft, he saw an objective symbol--nay, the corporeal fact--of England’s growing power; regiment after regiment made a pictorial calendar from 1660 to 1900, and to the informed mind what a vista of martial glory, what a presentation of advance and retreat over the tractless wastes of the world, they made! It was a trampling chronicle of woe and fame, shame and satisfaction; it embodied the progress of ideas, the clash of political tendencies, the spreading domination of English rule; it was a panorama of battles, the tide of victory, the ebbing terrors of defeat; it reflected the pages of political designs, political subterfuge, political confusion; the music that swelled from its ranks now sent the long waves of its solemn processional melody through the thrilled spectators, now in limpid folk-songs, quivered delightfully in their ears, and now again summoned them to their feet with the stately and pious invocation of the nation’s hymn.