It was half-past eleven when her Majesty reached the Abbey. Retiring for a space into the robing-room, she issued forth clad in the Royal robes of crimson velvet, lined with ermine, and embroidered with gold lace. Round her neck she wore the collars of the Garter, Thistle, Bath, and St. Patrick, and on her head a circlet of gold. It is mentioned that she looked very animated; and assuredly the scene was one well calculated to impress even the mind of a sovereign with a sense of lofty and almost overwhelming grandeur. The noble, time-honoured building, with half the history of England in its monuments and its memories, appealed powerfully to the moral sentiment; while the splendour of the decorations and the costumes was such as to hold the Turkish Ambassador entranced for some minutes. The peers and great officials, with their pages and other attendants, were gorgeously dressed; so also were the Foreign Ministers and their suites, and, in particular, Prince Esterhazy glittered with diamonds to his very boot-heels. Her train upborne by the daughters of eight peers, preceded by the regalia, the Princes of the blood-royal, and the great officers of State, and followed by the ladies of the Court and the gentlemen-at-arms, the Queen advanced slowly to the centre of the choir, and, amidst the chanting of anthems, moved towards a chair placed midway between the chair of homage and the altar, where, kneeling on a faldstool, she engaged in private devotion. The ceremony of the coronation then commenced.