IT is the 29th of May, 1660, and London is a gala city. The streets are hung with tapestry; flags and banners wave from the housetops; the citizens in their best attire throng the streets; the mayor, aldermen, and the gilds in all their bravery of ceremonial robes and gold chains hie them to the city gates; every balcony is full of lords and ladies clad in the sumptuous trappings of state; drums roll, trumpets sound, and bells clash from the steeples. The guns of the Tower roar out a welcome, and loud cries of “The king! the king!” are heard. His procession approaches “with a triumph of twenty thousand horse and foot, brandishing their swords and shouting with inexpressible joy.” Now you see him sitting his horse with easy grace, and bowing calmly as he responds to the acclamations of the crowd. He is tall and graceful, his countenance somewhat swarthy and forbidding. He smiles as maidens strew flowers in his way and men cheer until they can cheer no more. “It must be my own fault,” he says, “that I have not come back sooner, for I find nobody who does not tell me that he has always longed for my return.” He passes on to Whitehall and takes possession of the palace from which his father stepped on to the scaffold. Courtiers and sycophants, and honest men with tears in their eyes, crowd the presence-chamber to kiss his hands and wish him a long and happy reign, while the citizens outside give themselves up to unrestrained joy. A special Lord Mayor’s show is paraded as part of the festivities, and several of the pageants represent scenes from the life of the king who has just come into his own again. Look at this device now passing on a great wheeled platform. It is a scene in Boscobel Wood. In the midst is a spreading oak, and high in the branches you see a figure representing Charles hiding from the Commonwealth soldiers, who are searching for him below. This incident actually happened just nine years ago, after the “crowning mercy” of Worcester, when Cromwell thoroughly routed the Royalists and the young prince was a hunted fugitive. Another scene in the show represents him riding towards safety as the servant of faithful Jane Lane, who sits behind him trembling with anxiety. The fugitive is now receiving the obeisance of a gay, glittering throng in the palace of his sires. As he does so he recalls the shifts and subterfuges, the hairbreadth escapes, the privations and perils of those dark days, and bitterly contrasts the glorious present with the long years of his shabby and penurious exile.