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Updated: July 25, 2025
And, in imagination, to those who have seen the great pageants within our memory, the individual figures grow smaller as the magnificence of the display increases out of all proportion, until the church fills again with the vast throngs that witnessed the jubilees of Leo the Thirteenth in recent years, and fifty thousand voices send up a rending cheer while the most splendid procession of these late days goes by.
One month the streets of Paris would be a scene of horrible famine, where hungry dogs, and even wolves, put an end to the miseries of starving, homeless children of slaughtered parents; another, the people would be gazing at royal banquets, lasting a whole day, with allegorical "subtleties" of jelly on the table, and pageants coming between the courses, where all the Virtues harangued in turn, or where knights delivered maidens from giants and "salvage men."
The Estates then adjourned for a few weeks, having first passed a vote which empowered Hamilton to take such measures as might be necessary for the preservation of the public peace till the end of the interregnum. The ceremony of the inauguration was distinguished from ordinary pageants by some highly interesting circumstances.
"Guy Fawkes" was my first piece, in the days when the drama's "fireworks" were not epigrams, and so the smell of the sulphur still purifies the air. All the long series of "London successes," with their array of genius and furniture, have faded like insubstantial pageants, but the rude vault piled with flour-barrels for the desperado's torch is fixed as by chemic process.
During many years past the generosity of wealthy natives has to a great extent been diverted from the idle extravagance of pageants and festivals, to promote the intellectual advancement of their fellow-countrymen.
Its mandates must be obeyed, and that instantly; they may not be opposed, no, not even questioned. Who has not seen some young woman of talent and virtue sacrifice herself to this mistaken impression? The plume of the soldier, the gay air of the debauchee, the flippant beau, the half-insane tippler, could she not have seen her doom in being affianced to one of these poor pageants of humanity?
The question was debated in the council of Medina; the sanctity of the place, and the advice of Ali, persuaded the caliph to gratify the wishes of his soldiers and enemies; and the simplicity of his journey is more illustrious than the royal pageants of vanity and oppression.
Of course, it was at the height of its glory when the Earl of Leicester owned it, and Queen Elizabeth came here on a visit. I'm sure you have all read about that famous week, of all the pageants, feasts, carnivals, and displays of fireworks upon the lake. The lake was there; water covered all those low fields back of the castle.
The old world is dead, dead and buried along with its heroes and Helens and knights and ladies and tournaments and pageants. You cannot sing of the truth and wonder of to-day in terms of yesterday. And no one will listen to your singing till you sing of to-day in terms of to-day. This is the day of the common man. Do you glorify the common man? This is the day of the machine.
The costly pageants and feasts of the inns in old days must not be taken as indicative of the pecuniary resources of the common run of students; for the splendor of those entertainments was mainly due to the munificence of those more wealthy members who by a liberal and even profuse expenditure purchased a right to control the diversions of the colleges.
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