room. When the ladies had sipped and smiled to the extent of their inclinations, they retired, and the gentlemen took their places. In this happy alternation of indulgences we spent an hour or two, and if the English proverb is true, that "a good beginning is half the battle," a proverb, in my opinion, much superior to the tardiness of the old Roman saw, that "it is the end which crowns the mark," the gaiety of the morning's meal gave promise of a goodly day. I am determined to say no more of the rain. But once for all, I must say, that if the whole body of the London citizens had been one mighty glass tube, and the whole circulation within it quicksilver, the multitude could not have exhibited more susceptibility to every passing cloud. Half a million of eyes were turned every half minute upon the sky, and as if to tantalize them, that sky was a perpetual succession of clouds and sunshine. Below me the street was lined with a detachment of the Foot Guards. The officers put on their blue cloaks, and made themselves ready for a winter campaign. A smart shower came down. The hubbub of the streets instantly subsided into silence. John Bull drew his hat across his brows, and awaited the deluge with the fortitude of one prepared to be drowned on the spot but not to be moved. To reward his constancy I suppose, the face of the sky finally changed, the sun blazed forth, every countenance was lighted up along with it, and from that moment commenced a lovely day-a day made expressly for this national festivity. I now sallied forth in good earnest, and directed my march to the Queen's palace, naturally the centre of all attraction. I found the Park in which it stands crowded; a detachment of artillery posted in view of the palace to fire salutes: bodies of cuirassiers at intervals, and the infantry of the Royal Guards under arms. You have asked me what kind of monster is this palace? I have not now time to talk of it; but the descriptions which reached us in Paris were ridiculously en caricature. It is certainly not a planet among palaces, nor even a meteor. But it has merits much superior to any thing that I had been taught to expect. It is even a showy edifice, elegant in its con ception, and finished in its details. But its position is unfortunate. It touches a suburb filled with steamengines and chimneys enough to blacken ten palaces. The Parthenon, in its site, would have worn a robe of soot in a week. The temple of Luxor would have looked like a colossal blacksmith's shop. The palace of Queen Victoria is therefore any thing but an emblem of her innocence. It is the atrabilious reverse of "Candidior nive," and has the look of one hackneyed in the ways, and those the most fuliginous ways of the world. The plan too is no more fortunate than the position. It forms three sides of a square, the next deformity to four. The wings thus effect the purpose directly opposite to that of all other wings of earth, or air, if that be lightness. Those wings darken and depress. After all, the most graceful as well as the noblest of all ornaments to a great palace is the colonnade. Connecting the outer buildings with the body of the edifice, they are the pen-feathers, the strength and decoration of the wing together. Whether smooth or fluted, whether surmounted with the severe beauty of the Ionic capital, or the luxuriancy of the Composite, they are always a charm and the chief fault of the palace of the young English Queen is, that it sacrifices this truly Greek spell to sullen magnitude and heavy solidity. But the view in front is pretty and gentle; a sort of Tuilleries garden, but without the statues, but with what is infinitely more refreshing to the eye -a sheet of water, broken by one or two little islands; primitive spots, whose only inhabitants are waterfowl. The Englishman shows in every thing that he is born surrounded by the sea. Wherever he is surrounded by the land, he makes a mimic ocean, indulges his amphibious instincts by a pond in front, and fabricates a little St. George's Channel at the bottom of his garden. Far be it from me to decry our Tuilleries, the multitude of days which I have spent under its shades in that most delightful of all occupations, doing nothing; the quantity of newspaper lucubrations from the pens of all our illuminati, from Armand Carrell down to the incarcerated editors of the Tribune, while I was imbibing the glorious science of politics at two sous a day; and the half-million of black, brown, demi-brown, and blonde of the makers of human finery and soothers of human cares, who pour through the little groves in an uninterrupted stream of sportiveness, smiles, and short petticoats, have made it to me classic ground. Still it does not engross all the loveliness of the globe. Its marble heroes, rude as they may be, its stunted trees, its fishes gasping for water, its loungers gasping for air, and its philosophers gasping for news, revolutions, and young Napoleon, do not altogether supersede the velvet softness and showery green of even this English promenade, this quiet and cool water-giving quietness and coolness to every thing round it; the trees, which young as they are, seem never to have worn the stays which make our French trees look so prodigiously well behaved; all have a sense of Nature's having her own way that I am beginning to like. I almost doubt whether the spot would be much improved by a naked Meleager exhibiting his attitudes in the purest marble before an equally naked Atalanta, or even the three "Graces of Canova," as palpable as the most unhesitating chisel could make them, and revealing to the eyes of La Nation Boutiquière those Parian proportions which were once reserved for the petits soupers of Olympus. But now trumpets and drums began to sound. The plot was evidently thickening, and I made my way to the esplanade in front of the palace; the display here was brilliant. A triumphal arch, exactly modelled on ours in the Place du Carousal, placed with equal bad taste as a gateway to the palace, and differing from it only in having cost twice the money, and being the repetition of an error, bore upon its summit the national flag, attended by sailors, its natural guardians. On either side were lofty scaffoldings, crowded with ladies, the palace roof had its share of spectators; and every eye was fixed on the portico from which the young sovereign was to descend. One of the most remarkable features of the whole ceremonial was the presence of the Foreign Ambassadors. Those functionaries abound at the English Court. They came flocking from every corner of the earth. Nations unheard of till within these half dozen years, and whose political con cerns consist in cutting off the heads of a whole dynasty when they grow tired of them with their heads on, fortunate for the national honour if they do not roast and eat them; republics whose existence began last month, and will close the next, all send diplomatists here to represent the high interests of their country, and cultivate their own by dining and dancing at Court and every where else that they can. But on this occasion we always the masters of the ceremonies to the great Salle de Danse of Europe, we, par excellence the nation of gallantry, had the honour of setting the example of homage to the sex, we resolved to send our oldest and baldest Marshal to dance before the pretty Queen Victoria. Eti Our gallantry too was of some service. The ambassadorial faculty chiefly consisting in two points, keeping secrets that every one knows, and religiously respecting ceremonies that all the world besides have exploded; the proposal that those solemn personages should go in the procession, produced a universal shudder. quette was in despair, the whole body of attachés were ordered to prepare themselves for the last extremities, and their principals were ready to die, portfolio in hand, rather than to hazard this unheard of innovation. Old Soult had the merit of bringing them to their senses. Whether he used his old argument of the sabre and the cannon, that "ultima ratio" which the republicans learned so quickly from the kings, and the pupils handsomely paid back upon their teachers; or whether he appealed to such understandings as nature has given to Austrians, Prussians, Swedes, and Spaniards, are among the secrets of their function, and are to be kept in profound secrecy till any living man shall trouble himself about the matter. Probably he suggested that, as it was the purpose of their mission to be present at the performance in the metropolitan Cathedral, and as they could go by no other way than the streets, they might as well go along with her Majesty as without her. At all events, they came to the determination of joining the file, first mentally protesting against the breach of etiquette, and severally as I am told sending off couriers to inquire of their Courts what was to be done in this formidable emergency, an emergency which was to be over before an answer of any kind could be received. However, the gallant Marshal led the way on this occasion, as he had done on so many others, and the diplomatists-extraordinary ordered their equipages to follow the stream, a principle which is the essence of all success in diplomacy, as well as in all things of this life. My next movement was to pass in review their equipages, drawn up in the Bird-Cage Walk, now a wide and public road, but once a retired path where Charles II., the brother of our St. Germain's King, a hundred and fifty years ago, used to take his morning's promenade, attended by his courtiers and spaniels, two races of animals which, differing in the number of their legs, agreed in several capital points, the only exceptions of which I know any thing being that the spaniels, though they fondle, do not flatter; and though they may bite now and then, never betray. The carriages were fully worth the trouble of looking at them. They were certainly superb affairs. John Bull is supposed to be the best of coachmakers and the worst of politicians, to be unequalled in building an equipage, and the worst in constructing a treaty, of any man in existence. But time seems to equalize all things; and as we have within these later years certainly arrived at the art of making the most ridiculous of possible treaties, we have almost reached him in the art of panels, harness, and hammercloths. The Marshal's carriage was a prodigiously glittering creation. A cornice of fretted and flowered silver a foot high surrounded its top. The solitary star of the Legion of Honour blazed on its blue panels; half extinguished every where else, it flashed from its blue escutcheon as from a sky. The Marshal had the good taste to allow no competitor to rival it, among the fifty orders which he had conquered or commanded from the trembling courts of the continent. His baton was the only additional emblem. But it was enough. The other carriages were of Spanish and Portuguese, Austrian and Russian grandeeism. Inside sat uniforms of every conceivable embroidery, spangled with every conveivable order. The wearers were all but in visible. Moustache, whisker, and chintuft accomplished this object for their faces, and I was content with the pri vation. As the time was approaching when the procession was to move, I returned to our friend's house. The streets had now assumed a new appearance. The moving crowd moved no longer, it had formed solid masses on the trottoir; the police force had taken their stand along the line in front of the masses; the troops were spread in front of the police; the space in the centre was gravelled over, and kept clear for the carriages; and what was infinitely more to the purpose, in the way of ornament, the ladies had taken their places in the balconies. This view was worth all I had seen, and worth all the gilded carriages that I ever hope to see. Let me pause a moment to recover my breath, and I shall give you my final opinion of the beauty of Englishwomen. They are the only women in the world who can venture to show their faces in daylight! Let this be said without any undue qualification of my homage for foreign beauty in general, and French beauty in particular. "Quoi!--Neron est il amoureux ? Depuis un moment; mais pour toute ma vie, J'aime, que dis-je aimer? j'idolatre But it was made for the light of chan- For an hour or two we had amused ourselves with the spectacle of the carriages conveying the nobility to the Cathedral. Next to the women, by far the finest things in England are the horses. The Duke of Northumberland's steeds, covered with blue ribbons, the Duke of Devonshire's, the Duke of Buccleuch's, and a multitude of others, were superb animals. And the prices given for them are superb. An English gentleman, who seemed fully conversant with such matters, told me that the Duchess of Kent's horses cost each upwards of 8000 francs! But those English nobles are the richest in the world. Many of them could buy a German principality, prince and all, and even their tenth class could swallow up a dozen of our majorats. This enormous opulence arises from two things, the possession of pedigree, and the absence of pride, Some of the noble families reach back to the Normans, and are like mighty rivers whose course is perpetually swelled by smaller rivers falling into their course. Those families gradually become the deposit of a succession of minor families. But when the English noble family decays in its exchequer, it seldom exhibits any scruple whatever, to recruit its losses by an alliance with the commercial classes. A handsome girl is not thought the worse of for bringing a couple of millions of francs in her hand. She gains her grand object, a title; the honest trader who has made her dower gains his grand object, the honour of having a peer for a son-in-law; the peer gains his grand object, a sum sufficient to pay off the incumbrances of the family estate; and the bargain thus pleases every body but the maiden aunts and the Herald's College, for whom nobody cares. As I stood at one of the windows, looking down over a whole parterre of bonnets and beauties in front, at the endless stream of showy vehicles which carried the elite of England to the Abbey, I happened to say something implying a doubt of the Marshal's reception by the populace. "The higher ranks of your country," I observed to a solid-looking Englishman, who was uneasily standing on a bench to make the same experiment over my shoulders, for we were crowded like pigeons in a coop, "will doubtless treat him with the respect due to his rank, but the people in the streets, what will they do?" "I shall undertake to say," was the reply, "that they will treat him better than even the higher ranks, if he has the sense to prefer cordiality to ceremony." "But he has fought against them so long." "They like him the better for it. He has fought stoutly, and you cannot get nearer to John Bull's heart, than by showing that you have a stout heart of your own." "But your newspapers are at this moment attacking his talents as a soldier, and discussing over again the battle of Thoulouse." "Well, who can help them? The newspapers don't care a pin's-head upon the subject, nor do the people. But newspapers are like those policemen before you, they flourish their staves to show that they can knock down upon occasion; or, like the wild beasts in the Zoological Gardens, they roar to remind you of their existence, and show their teeth to tell you that they want something to eat. But, sir, with all respect for your country, I never met a Frenchman who could be persuaded that every peevish paragraph in a London newspaper was not a declaration of war, and that the writer was not a Secretary of State." "But your graver publications, your Reviews, have taken up the subject, and angrily too." "Well, and who can help the Reviews? We have no censorship here, and every one who has an opinion may give it, and this very license breaks off the point of the sting. Who cares for an opinion, when it is only one of a million of opinions? A man in a garret thinks your Marshal the greatest general that the sun ever shone upon. A man in a drawingroom, with a Turkey carpet, and an ormolu inkstand, thinks that he does not know a musket from a pocketpistol. A man in a printing office today compares him to Marlborough and Turenne, next day he pronounces that he is not fit to carry their knapsacks. Who cares for all this? Besides, to do the English papers justice, they did not begin. A pamphleteer on the other side of the water opened the ball, sank Wellington to the dust, and lifted Soult up to the skies. This put the match to the gun, and off it went." "Yes, the beginning of the skir mish I allow to have been French. But the pamphleteer was so obscure, his reasons were so absurd, and the whole was so evidently the work of Jacobinism to sour the people of England against the Marshal, and the Marshal boxing-match or a campaign, no people against the people, that English saga- on earth are more ready to shake hands city should have seen through the when all is over, and say no more about scheme and despised it." it." "Perhaps so; they certainly ought to have shown more temper than to care about such tricks. But the bulldog lives for fighting; show him the bull, and whether it is for sport or slaughter he flies at it. As for the battle of Thoulouse, the whole affair has been over nearly a quarter of a century; three-fourths of all men alive were born since and know nothing about it; the other fourth have forgotten it, excepting old women and lords of the bedchamber. We might as well abuse each other for the wars of the Edwards, or quarrel about the chivalry of Amadis de Gaul." The trumpets of the squadrons leading the procession were now heard, and all eyes were turned to its entrance into the street. It looked as fine as plumes, cuirasses, chasseurs, and valets all over gilding, and carriages hung all over with chasseurs and valets, could look; it was an endless column of all kinds of brilliancy glittering under a cloudless sun. As the principal equipages passed, and were recognised, the populace gave them huzzas, more or less loud according to their favouritism. The Duchess of Kent, as the Queen's mother, shared largely in the huzzas. The Duke of Sussex, as her uncle, shared still more largely, his relationship and his radicalism combining. -But among this moving panorama of princes, by far the most warmly applauded was Soult. My English friend looked at me with a face of triumph at the success of his prediction. "I told you how it would be," said he." "Yes," was my answer, "your nation knows how to pay the rights of hospitality." Not an atom of it," said this intractable Cicerone. "Do you think that these fellows below are for any thing of the kind? Not they; they are merely indulging in the national curiosity; and they are not the worse for that neither. Every man of them has heard of Soult, and every man is trying to get a sight of his weatherbeaten face. They know him to be a brave old soldier, and they don't care a feather whether he fought against them or for them. To do them justice, they never think of the blow after the battle; and whether the affair is a After this homely exposition of the soul of John Bull, how shall I rise to the description of the pomps within the Abbey. I shall not attempt the difficulty. I must leave it to your vivid imagination to conceive all that is conceivable on such subjects-the splendour, the loyalty, the embroidered robes of the Duchess of Sutherland, and the diamond stomacher of Prince Esterhazy, whose outer man on this day, I understand, has been valued by the authorities on such subjects at a quarter of a million sterling. Never was a noble so well worth running away with. Never was a prince whose value would be so vexatiously dimin ished by his returning to those times of simplicity when coats and waistcoats were unknown. However, he is a favourite here, for reasons less sparkling perhaps than his wardrobe, but not less important to his mission. -The newspapers will tell you all the formal proceedings of the day. The ceremony is the same in all its chief features with our own. The Pope, however, neither comes across the Alps for it, nor are the Cardinals an essential part of the performance. But the whole is ecclesiastical in the highes degree. The prelates are the managers every part of the crowning is performed by the hands of archbishops and bishops. The laity, peers, Privy Councillors, and even Ministers, stand at an awful distance while the Sovereign receives the diadem from the hands of the Church, and pledges herself to its privileges for ever and ever. When the golden circlet is laid on the royal brow the Peerage place their coronets on their own, and shout, having nothing else to do. A roar of artillery announced the auspicious act to the multitude without, and was answered by acclamations. We next heard the answering roar of cannon from their different positions round the city; and then the day of pomp was done. The Queen retired, followed by the coroneted crowd, the pageantry disappeared like phantoms, and a philosopher, looking at the sudden clearance of the scarlet benches, might have moralized on the vanity of human things, though at the imminent hazard of being locked in for the night. |