tatues so puerile,
disorderly, and hideous that a lover of the arts must hang the head of
shame as he passes, to see our dear old queen city arraying herself so
absurdly; but when all is said and done, we can show one or two of the
greatest sights in the world. I doubt if any Roman festival was as vast
or striking as the Derby day, or if any Imperial triumph could show
such a prodigious muster of faithful people as our young Princess saw on
Saturday, when the nation turned out to greet her. The calculators are
squabbling about the numbers of hundreds of thousands, of millions,
who came forth to see her and bid her welcome. Imagine beacons flaming,
rockets blazing, yards manned, ships and forts saluting with their
thunder, every steamer and vessel, every town and village from Ramsgate
to Gravesend, swarming with happy gratulation; young girls with flowers,
scattering roses before her; staid citizens and aldermen pushing and
squeezing and panting to make the speech, and bow the knee, and bid her
welcome! Who is this who is honored with such a prodigious triumph, and
received with a welcome so astonishing? A year ago we had never heard
of her. I think about her pedigree and family not a few of us are in the
dark still, and I own, for my part, to be much puzzled by the allusions
of newspaper genealogists and bards and skalds to Vikings, Berserkers,
and so forth. But it would be interesting to know how many hundreds of
thousands of photographs of the fair bright face have by this time made
it beloved and familiar in British homes. Think of all the quiet country
nooks from Land's End to Caithness, where kind eyes have glanced at it.
The farmer brings it home from market; the curate from his visit to
the Cathedral town; the rustic folk peer at it in the little village
shop-window; the squire's children gaze on it round the drawing-room
table: every eye that beholds it looks tenderly on its bright beauty and
sweet artless grace, and young and old pray God bless her. We have an
elderly friend, (a certain Goody Twoshoes,) who inhabits, with many
other old ladies, the Union House of the parish of St. Lazarus in Soho.
One of your cousins from this house went to see her, and found Goody and
her companion crones all in a flutter of excitement about the marriage.
The whitewashed walls of their bleak dormitory were ornamented with
prints out of the illustrated journals, and hung with festoons and
true-lovers' knots of tape and colored pa