t chorus rang out in
a song of praise to their Queen. Then she was led to a table on a
platform at the end of the room, where she was served with a dinner as
costly as could be procured to tempt her fancy, receiving the homage of
city officials as she dined. The feast over, a person called the Common
Crier strode into the middle of the hall and solemnly proclaimed, "The
Right Honourable the Lord Mayor gives the health of our Most Gracious
Sovereign, Queen Victoria!" Of course this was drunk amid a chorus of
shouts which made the great hall ring to the roof. Victoria rose and
bowed her thanks, and then the Common Crier announced, "Her Majesty's
Toast, 'The Lord Mayor and prosperity to the city of London!'" This
toast, it is said, the Queen responded to by drinking it in sherry one
hundred and twenty years old, kept for some wonderful occasion such as
this.

That year, Victoria's first as a Queen, she celebrated Christmas at
Windsor Castle, and it would have been a very unnatural thing indeed if
the girl had not exulted with joy over the wonderful presents which
poured in on her from every side, and yet she kept through this, as in
all the honours paid to her, her simple-hearted manner and was entirely
unspoiled by what might easily have turned the head of an older and
wiser monarch.

And now comes the greatest of all the great events in which the young
Queen is the central figure--her Coronation. It is true that she had
already been Queen for a whole year, but such was royal etiquette that
the time had just arrived for the wonderful ceremonies which would mark
her official taking of the Crown.

June the twenty-eighth was the day, and the year 1838, and Victoria was
nineteen years old. They came beforehand, the old courtiers, and
explained to her the coming pageant, and how after kneeling to her they
were all required to rise and kiss her on the left cheek. Gravely she
listened and thought this over, thought not only of the salutes of the
grave Archbishops, but of the kisses of those other younger peers, of
whom there were six hundred, and then she issued a proclamation excusing
them from this duty, so all but the Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex, who
could kiss her rosy cheek by special privilege of kinship, would have to
be content with pressing a salute on her hand!

As for the Coronation, it was one of the most wonderful in history, for
all England wished to look with proud eyes on the crowning of this young
girl wh