fine for good taste, at least it would have appeared so any where else. Beside the prince sat a good humoured lass, who seemed all eyes and ears (his daughter-in-law, I believe), who wore as many diamonds as if they had been Bristol stones. An honest Persian was also a remarkable figure, from the dogged and imperturbable gravity with which he looked on the whole scene, without ever moving a limb or a muscle during the space of four hours. Like Sir Wilful Witwood, I cannot find that your Persian is orthodox; for if he scorned every thing else, there was a Mahometan paradise extended on his right hand along the seats which were occupied by the peeresses and their daughters, which the prophet himself might have looked on with emotion. I have seldom seen so many elegant and beautiful girls as sat mingled among the noble matronage of the land; and the waving plumage of feathers, which made the universal headdress, had the most appropriate effect in setting off their charms.

"I must not omit, that the foreigners, who are apt to consider us a nation en frac, and without the usual ceremonies of dress and distinction, were utterly astonished and delighted to see the revival of feudal dresses and feudal grandeur when the occasion demanded it, and that in a degree of splendour which they averred they had never seen paralleled in Europe.

"The duties of service at the banquet, and of attendance in general, was performed by pages dressed very elegantly in Henri Quatre coats of scarlet, with gold lace, blue sashes, white silk hose, and white rosettes. There were also marshals' men for keeping order, who wore a similar dress, but of blue, and having white sashes. Both departments were filled up almost entirely by young gentlemen, many of them of the very first condition, who took those menial characters to gain admission to the show. When I saw many of my young acquaintance thus attend. ing upon their fathers and kinsmen, the peers,

knights, and so forth, I could not help thinking of Crabbe's lines, with a little alteration

6

"Twas schooling pride to see the menial wait,
Smile on his father, and receive his plate

It must be owned, however, that they proved but indifferent valets, and were very apt, like the clown in the pantomime, to eat the cheer they should have handed to their masters, and to play other tours de page, which reminded me of the caution of our proverb, not to man yourself with your kin." The peers, for example, had only a cold collation, while the aldermen of London feasted on venison and turtle; and similar errors necessarily befell others in the confusion of the evening. But those slight mistakes, which indeed were not known till afterward, had not the slightest effect on the general grandeur of the scene.

"I did not see the procession between the Abbey and Hall. In the morning a few voices called' Queen! queen!' as Lord Londonderry passed, and even when the sovereign appeared. But those were only signals for the loud and reiterated acclamations, in which these tones of discontent were completely drowned. In the return, no one dissonant voice intimated the least dissent from the shouts of gratulation which poured from every quarter; and certainly never monarch received a more general welcome from his assembled subjects.

"You will have from others full accounts of the variety of entertainments provided for John Bull in the parks, on the river, in the theatres, and elsewhere. Nothing was to be seen or heard but sounds of pleasure and festivity; and whoever saw the scene at any one spot, was convinced that the whole population was assembled there, while others found a similar concourse of revellers in every different point. It is computed that about 500,000 people shared in the festival, in one way or other; and you may imagine the excellent disposition by which the people

were animated, when I tell you that, excepting a few windows broken by a small body-guard of ragamuf fins, who were in immediate attendance on the great lady in the morning, not the slightest political violence occurred to disturb the general harmony; and that the assembled populace seemed to be universally actuated by the spirit of the day, namely, loyalty and good-humour. Nothing occurred to damp those happy dispositions; the weather was most propitious, and the arrangements so perfect, that no accident of any kind is reported as having taken place. And so, concluded the coronation of George IV., whom God long preserve! Those who witnessed it have seen a scene calculated to raise the country in their opinion, and to throw into the shade all scenes of similar magnificence, from the field of the cloth of gold down to the present day.

"AN EYE-WITNESS."

The unfortunate intrusion to which this letter alludes, occurred early in the day. The queen was refused entrance into the cathedral; and when she at length, after several efforts, withdrew, the mob expressed their sentiments by breaking the ministers' windows. But the disappointment was fatal to her. She lost her spirits, shrank from society, declared herself tired of life, and in less than a month died.

The ruling passion was strong, even in death. She ordered that her remains should not be left in this country, but buried in Brunswick; and that the inscription on her tomb should be," Here lies Caroline of Brunswick, the injured Queen of England." Thus perished a being on whom fortune had lavished all the highest advantages of rank, opulence, birth, and station, the wife of a royal husband, the mother of a royal child; a queen, and Queen of England! yet in her life and her death scarcely to be envied by a galley-slave.

*7th August, 1821

CHAPTER XVIII.

Napoleon.

THE battle of Jena, in 1806, had placed Napoleon at the height of power. The treaty of Tilsit, in 1807, had confirmed it; and the conference at Erfurt had indulged his love of display with the most profuse spectacle of vassal royalty. But from that moment the wheel turned; for the purpose of his career was done. He had scourged the profligacy of the continental courts; he had scattered, like chaff before the wind, the armies that had been so long the instruments of the blind violences and sanguinary ambition of the great continental thrones, -thrones that, under the name of Christianity, had exhibited in their private excesses and public ferocity the spirit of heathenism. Prussia the infidel, Austria the bigot, and Russia the barbarian had been transfixed with the spear of an avenger, more godless, prejudiced, and ferocious than them all; the standards which they had crimsoned in the blood of Poland were gone to moulder in the dust of the Invalides; and now, when the punishment was complete, the time of the punisher was come.

In the early part of the year 1812, Napoleon, furious at the repugnance of the emperor of Russia to see his subjects perish by the Berlin and Milan decrees, proclaimed, in his old oracular style, that "the Russian dynasty was no more" and followed the oracle by a force well calculated to ensure its fulfilment. He crossed the Polish provinces with an army the most numerous since the days of Xerxes or Attila, but which would have passed through their wild myriads.

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as the cannon-ball through the air. With half a million of the finest troops that ever marched to play the game of ambition, he broke over the Russian frontier; and was himself undone.

The narrative of that stupendous contest,-of French skill and gallantry, of the stubborn heroism of the Russian armies, of cities stormed and in conflagration, of provinces desolated, and of the rage of a Russian winter let loose, and covering a march of six hundred miles with the French dead,-must not be humiliated by the sketch which alone could be given of it here.

Napoleon's defeat was measureless; of the multitudes that had followed him across the Niemen, scareely a man returned. But he again found ármies in the populousness of France; within a few months rushed to the field; fought the bloody battles of Bautzen and Lutzen; was again maddened with pride, until he roused the continent against him; and finally at Leipsic was overwhelmed once more. The remnant of his army was hunted across the Rhine, was hunted through France, was hunted into the gates of the capital; and there, when victory had flung Napoleon on the ground, diplomatic blundering came to set him on his feet again. To extinguish his ambition, he was suffered to retain the imperial title; to destroy his connexion with the French military, he was suffered to retain his flag, his staff, and a portion of his guard; and to prevent the possibility of his renewing disturbances in France or Italy, he was fixed on an island almost within sight of both. The consequences were foreseen by all mankind-except the emperors, the diplomatists, and the Bourbons.

A year after, while the whole pomp of European diplomacy was busied in congress at Vienna, and every day saw some new experiment of power, a monarchy mutilated, a river given to one potentate, or the humbler donative of a million of souls and