our and a half or two hours, and during the
whole of it the talk and hand-shaking among the diplomatists go on
very pleasantly. There is a great deal of _esprit de corps_ among
them, and perfect equality. Attaches, secretaries and ministers walk
about through the room and exchange greetings. The ambassadors are
rather statelier: these do not mix themselves with the crowd of
diplomatists, but stand up apart, all five in a row, leaning against
the wall, chatting easily, looking quite like another row of princes,
a sort of after-glow of the royalties.

At all other court entertainments ladies are present. Of course
there are a great many very pretty ones, and their brilliant toilets
increase the magnificence of the spectacle. The queen's levees are
very much longer than those of the prince of Wales. Then, at all
ceremonials where there are ladies, men are compelled to wear, as
I have said, silk stockings and knee-breeches, slippers and
shoe-buckles. One can support this costume in tolerable comfort in a
warm room, but in getting from the carriage to the door it is often
like walking knee-deep in a tub of cold water. A cold hall or a
draught from an open door will give very unpleasant sensations. In
many of the large rooms of the palaces huge fireplaces, with great
logs of wood, roar behind tall brass fenders. Once in front of one of
these, the courtier who isn't a Scotchman feels as if he would never
care to go away. Fortunately, most of these ceremonials are in summer,
but the first of them come in February, and London is often cool well
up into June.

The ceremony of a presentation to the queen is quite the same as that
at a prince of Wales's levee. The spelling-class of royal ladies stand
up in a rigid row. On the queen's right is the lord chamberlain, who
reads off the names. Next to the queen, on her left, is Alexandra,
then the queen's daughters and the Princess Mary of Cambridge. Next
to them stand the princes, and the whole is a phalanx which stretches
entirely across the room. Behind this line, drawn up in battle array,
stand three or four ranks of court ladies.

The act of presentation is very easy and simple. Formerly--indeed,
until within a few years--it must have been a very perilous and
important feat. The courtier (the term is used inaccurately, but there
is no noun to describe a person who goes to court for a single time)
was compelled to walk up a long room, and to back, bowing, out of the
queen's pres