noble matrons. It had
induced Parr to suspend his labours in that dark and profound mine
from which he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition, a
treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with
injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still precious,
massive, and splendid. There appeared the voluptuous charms of her
to whom the heir of the throne had in secret plighted his faith.
There too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the
Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and
music, art has rescued from the common decay. There were the
members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised, and
exchanged repartees, under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs.
Montague. And there the ladies whose lips, more persuasive than
those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster election against
palace and treasury, shone round Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

"The Serjeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar,
and bent his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that
great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous country,
had made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and
pulled down princes. And in his high place he had so borne
himself, that all had feared him, that most had loved him, and
that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory, except
virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like a bad man. A
person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage
which, while it indicated deference to the court, indicated also
habitual self-possession and self-respect, a high and intellectual
forehead, a brow pensive, but not gloomy, a mouth of inflexible
decision, a face pale and worn, but serene, on which was written,
as legibly as under the picture in the council-chamber at
Calcutta, _Mens aequa in arduis_; such was the aspect with which
the great Proconsul presented himself to his judges."

Such a scene can only find its appropriate enactment at the centre of a
great empire and amid a people with an august history behind them,
conscious of present magnificence and confident of future glory.

We are now far into the second century since that memorable spectacle
filled to the walls the great Hall of Westminster.

What was an oligarchy permeated by a fine spirit of liberty and adorned
by the sacred prin