course, and a few
even false to sentiment. No entry, for example, received a heartier
round of British applause than did Nell Gwynn's (Episode IX).
Tears actually sprang to many eyes when an orange-girl in the
crowd pushed forward offering her wares, and Nell with a gay laugh
bought fruit of her, announcing "_I_ was an orange-girl once!"
Brother Copas snorted, and snorted again more loudly when Prebendary
Ken refused to admit the naughty ex-orange-girl within his episcopal
gates. For the audience applauded the protest almost as effusively,
and again clapped like mad when the Merry Monarch took the rebuke
like a sportsman, promising that "the next Bishopric that falls
vacant shall be at this good old man's disposal!"

Indeed, much of the Pageant was extremely silly. Yet, as it
progressed, Brother Copas was not alone in feeling his heart lift
with the total effect of it. Here, after all, thousands of people
were met in a common pride of England and her history. Distort it as
the performers might, and vain, inadequate, as might be the words
they declaimed, an idea lay behind it all. These thousands of people
were met for a purpose in itself ennobling because unselfish.
As often happens on such occasions, the rite took possession of them,
seizing on them, surprising them with a sudden glow about the heart,
sudden tears in the eyes. This _was_ history of a sort. Towards the
close, when the elm shadows began to stretch across the green stage,
even careless spectators began to catch this infection of nobility--
this feeling that we are indeed greater than we know.

In the last act all the characters--from early Briton to Georgian
dame--trooped together into the arena. In groups marshalled at
haphazard they chanted with full hearts the final hymn, and the
audience unbidden joined in chorus--

"O God! our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast
And our eternal home!"

"Where is the child?" asked Brother Copas, glancing through the
throng.

He found her in the thick of the press, unable to see anything for
the crowd about her, and led her off to a corner where, by the
southern end of the Grand Stand, some twenty Brethren of St. Hospital
stood shouting in company--

"A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone,
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun."

"She can't see. Lift her higher!" s