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Then came the Comedies of Terence, the Metamorphoses of Ovid, Martial, and the Satires of Juvenal. And with those my transformation was complete. No longer could I find satisfaction in the writings of the fathers of the church, or in contemplating the lives of the saints, after the pageantries which the eyes of my soul had looked upon in the profane authors.
It was, assuredly, in the point of view by which Clarence now approached it, a structure which possessed few superiors in point of size and effect; and harmonized so well with the nobly extent of the park, the ancient woods, and the venerable avenues, that a very slight effort of imagination might have poured from the massive portals the pageantries of old days, and the gay galliard of chivalric romance with which the scene was in such accordance, and which in a former age it had so often witnessed.
"It was dangerous for one in whose conduct so many prying eyes were seeking for sources of accusation to gratify herself even by the overthrow of an absurdity, when that overthrow might incur the stigma of innovation. The Court of Versailles was jealous of its Spanish inquisitorial etiquette. It had been strictly wedded to its pageantries since the time of the great Anne of Austria.
Louis had already removed the pageantries of his royal household to his magnificent new palace of Versailles, on which the wealth of conquered kingdoms had been lavished, and there, in the Great Hall of Mirrors, received the homage of his own nobles and the ambassadors of foreign powers.
Oh, how our pulses leaped and thrilled, when, at the dead of night, We saw our legions mustering, and marching forth to fight! Line after line comes surging on with martial pomp and pride, And all the pageantries that gild the battle's crimson tide. A forest of bright bayonets, like stars at midnight, gleam; A hundred glittering standards flash above the silver stream.
No party was spared, no estate excepted, but each knight endeavoured to win the golden fleece, that expected either fame or the favour of his mistress, which sport continued all the same day." These pageantries were of frequent occurrence, and the pages of the picturesque old chronicler above-cited abound with descriptions of them.
The residence of the Court at Dublin, not merely to gratify the popular love of royalty and its pageantries, which no man of sense desires to stimulate, but to assure the Irish people, in the only way possible as regards the mass of them, that the sovereign of the United Kingdom is really their sovereign, and that they are equally cared for and honoured with the other subjects of the realm.
And, in truth, the really kingly speeches which Shakespeare assigns to him, as to other kings weak enough in all but speech, are but a kind of flowers, worn for, and effective only as personal embellishment. They combine to one result with the merely outward and ceremonial ornaments of royalty, its pageantries, flaunting so naively, so credulously, in Shakespeare, as in that old medieval time.
But it reflects not at all upon the high intelligence, the unobtrusive but sterling moral qualities, the tact, dignity, and personal charm of the central figure in their pageantries, a charm the pathetic circumstances of his unseasonable illness very greatly enhanced, if the New Republican fails to consider these ceremonials of primary importance, if he declines to see them as of any necessary importance at all, until it has been conclusively shown that they do minister to the bettering of births and of the lives intervening between birth and birth.
He revisited again, in thought, the blooming grove of Capreæ, the pageantries of Cesarea, the green lanes of Buckingham, the luxurious salon of Paris, and the twilight of the garden of Wahring. Italian beauty lived again in his remembrance, but a beauty marred by licentiousness and cruelty.
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