Parliament met on the 1st of February, and Mr. Denison was elected Speaker. It was known that Lord Russell was anxious to strengthen his Ministry by giving Mr. Bright a seat in the Cabinet, but his colleagues objected to this step, and the omen was not auspicious for the Party of Reform. Writing on the 6th of February in his Diary, Lord Malmesbury says, “the Queen opened Parliament to-day. She came in a State coach with her eight cream-coloured horses, but entered by the Peers’ entrance. She was well received, but did not wear her robes, which were placed on the Throne, and did not read the Speech, which was read by the Lord Chancellor.”[241] It was the first State ceremony at which the Queen had assisted since the death of her husband, and the scene in the Upper House was unusually brilliant. The bright dresses of the Peeresses, the mass of gorgeous colour on the floor of the House, where the Peers wore their robes, the flashing lights from glittering orders and uniforms worn by the splendid company of foreign diplomatists, afforded a spectacle that gladdened the artistic eye. It was marred only by the wild and disorderly scramble of the members of the House of Commons for places. They trooped into the Royal presence like a band of disorderly roughs let loose from Donnybrook Fair. The Speaker was hustled aside and jammed against the edge of the Bar as he vainly attempted to make his obeisance to the Queen. The leading members of the Government vanished in the struggle, though Sir Charles Wood was ultimately discovered in an attitude of agony almost impaled on the sharp carving of an oaken lion rampant. As for the sword of the Sergeant-at-Arms, it got entangled with everybody’s legs, including his own. The reaction which followed the excitement of the ceremony had caused much nervous depression, and the Queen was accordingly recommended to seek repose at Osborne. “I am happy to think,” writes the Princess Louis of Hesse to her mother, in a letter referring to the event, “that you are quiet at Osborne after all you had gone through. The emotion and all other feelings recalled by such an event must have been very powerful and have tried you much. It was noble of you, my darling mama, and the great effort will bring compensation. Think of the pride and pleasure it would have given darling papa--the brave example to others not to shrink from their duty; and it has shown that you felt the intense sympathy which the English people evinced and still evince in your misfortune.”