There was a blunder about the artillery. The Queen cannot endure firing, and the Duke had ordered that the guns should not be fired till she left the ground. By some mistake contrary orders were given, and they advanced and fired not far from Her Majesty. The Duke was furious, and would not be pacified, though Emperor, Queen, and Prince did their best to appease him; he blew up, and swore lustily, and ordered the luckless artillery into the rear. It was a mighty small concern for the Emperor, who reviews 100,000 men, and sees 15,000 mount guard every day; but he expressed his satisfaction, and when the Queen said her troops were few in number, he told her that she must consider his troops at her disposal exactly the same as her own. On Thursday they went to Ascot again, where they were received very well by a dense multitude; on Friday to London, where they gave him a party at the Palace, omitting to ask half the remarkable people, especially of the Opposition. On Saturday a breakfast at Chiswick, a beautiful _fête_, and perfectly successful. Everything that was distinguished in London was collected to see and be seen by the Emperor. All the statesmen, fine ladies, poets, artists, beauties, were collected in the midst of a display of luxury and magnificence, set off by the most delicious weather. The Emperor lunched in a room fitted up with his arms and ensigns, and afterwards held a sort of circle on the grass, where people were presented to him, and he went round talking to one after another. His appearance on the whole disappointed me. He is not so tall as I had heard he was--about 6 feet 2, I should guess; and he has no remains of the beauty for which he was once so celebrated, and which at his age, forty-eight, need not have so entirely faded away; but the cares of such an Empire may well have ravaged that head on which they sit not lightly. He is become bald and bulky, but nevertheless is still a very fine and grand-looking personage. He accepts his age and its consequences, and does not try to avert them by any artificial appliances, and looks all the better for so doing. Though he has a very imposing air, I have seen much nobler men; he does not bear the highest aristocratic stamp; his general appearance is inferior to that of Lord Anglesey or Lord Granville (both twenty-five years older), and to others. He gives me more the idea of a Thracian peasant raised to Empire, than of the descendant of a line of kings; still his head, and especially his profile, is very fine, and his manners are admirable, affable without familiarity, cordial yet dignified, and particularly full of deference and gallantry to women. As he moved round the circle all smiling and urbane, I felt a sensation of awe mixed with that of curiosity at reflecting that I saw before me a potentate so mighty and despotic, on whose will and pleasure or caprice depended the fortune, the happiness, and the lives of millions of creatures; and when the