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"Just as we were about setting off thither, I waiting till the Margraf were ready, the Xargraf entered, and a Lady with him; who, he informed me, was Madame de Belleisle, the French Ambassador's Wife:" Wife of the great Belleisle, the soul of all these high congregatings, consultations, coronations, who is not Kaiser but maker of Kaisers: what is to be done!
All that wonderful history, since Clovis was baptized by Saint Remi; and Charlemagne crowned, and Charles the VII, with Jeanne d'Arc looking on in bright armour, and various Capets, and enough other kings to name Notre-Dame of Rheims the "Cathedral of Coronations."
The use of different crowns in the coronations of all the Tudors subsequent to Henry VIII. shows plainly how the recent origin of their secondary title was understood and acknowledged during the remainder of the sixteenth century.
Coronations do not happen very frequently and for this one people came from immense distances and from many foreign countries. When did the people begin gathering up in the streets to see the King on his way to be crowned? No one can certainly tell, but it was before the daylight dawned on June 22, 1911.
As a correspondent I have seen all the great armies and the military processions at the coronations in Russia, England, and Spain, and our own inaugural parades down Pennsylvania Avenue, but those armies and processions were made up of men. This was a machine, endless, tireless, with the delicate organization of a watch and the brute power of a steam roller.
It is all royal marriages, coronations, and victories; they come tumbling so over one another from distant parts of the globe, that it looks just like the handywork of a lady romance writer, whom it costs nothing but a little false geography to make the Great Mogul in love with a Princess of Mecklenburgh, and defeat two marshals of France as he rides post on an elephant to his nuptials.
I wonder it does not occur to modern ingenuity to make a scenic representation, in this very hall, of the ancient trials for life or death, pomps, feasts, coronations, and every great historic incident in the lives of kings, Parliaments, Protectors, and all illustrious men, that have occurred here.
In another class was the costume of every nation in the world; in a third, portraits of eminent persons of all ages and nations; and in a fourth, a collection of prints relating to public festivals, cavalcades, tournaments, coronations, royal funerals, &c. France is the only kingdom in the world which possesses a treasure like this, and which knows how to estimate it at its proper value.
I have seen a hundred grand sights in the world, coronations, Parisian splendors, Crystal Palace openings, Pope's chapels with their processions of long-tailed cardinals and quavering choirs of fat soprani, but think in all Christendom there is no such sight as Charity Children's day. Non Anglei, sed angeli.
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.
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