James' Park. Such a world of people everywhere! All Great Britain and
much of the Continent seemed to have emptied themselves into this
metropolis, which overflowed with a surging, murmuring tide of humanity.
Ah me, how much of that eager, noisy life is silent and forgotten now!
There may have before been coronations surpassing that of Victoria in
scenic splendor, if not in solid magnificence-that of the first Napoleon
and his Empress, perhaps-but there has been nothing so grand as a royal
pageant seen since, until the crowning of the present Russian Emperor at
Moscow, where the almost intolerable splendor was seen against a dark
background of tragic possibilities. This English coronation was less
brilliant, perhaps, but also less barbaric than that august, overpowering
ceremony over which it seemed there might hover "perturbed spirits" of
men slain in mad revolts against tyranny--of youths and women done to
death on the red scaffold, in dungeons, in midnight mines, and Siberian
snows; and about which there surely lurked the fiends of dynamite. But
this pure young girl, trusting implicitly in the loving loyalty of her
subjects--relying on Heaven for help and guidance, lifted to the throne
by the Constitution and the will of a free people, as conquerors have
been upborne on shields, what had she to fear? A very different and un-
nihilistic "cloud of witnesses" was hers, we may believe.
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