y of
performers, so it was of necessity deferred. On her road home, the
master of the grammar-school stayed the procession to deliver a
lengthened speech before the gates of the hospital for old men, to which
the queen graciously replied in flattering terms, presenting her hand to
be kissed. Thursday was marked by divers pageantries, prepared by order
of the Lord Chamberlain, by the devisor. The morning display, which was
to enliven her majesty's riding excursion, was made up of nymphs playing
in water, the space occupied for the same being a square of sixty feet,
with a deep hole four feet square in some part of it, to answer for a
cave. The ground was covered with canvas, painted like grass, with
running cords through the rings attached to its sides, which obeyed
another small cord in the centre, by which machinery, with two holes on
the ground, the earth was made to appear to open and shut. In the cave,
in the centre, was music, and the twelve water-nymphs, dressed in white
silk with green sedges, so cunningly stitched on them, that nothing else
could be seen. Each carried in her hand a bundle of bulrushes, and on
her head a garland of ivy and a crop of moss, from whence streamed their
long golden tresses over their shoulders. Four nymphs were to come forth
successively and salute her majesty with a speech, then all twelve were
to issue forth and dance with timbrels.

The show of _Manhood and Desert_, designed for the entertainment at Lord
Surrey's, was also placed close by. _Manhood_, _Favour_, _Desert_,
striving for a boy called _Beauty_, who, however, was to fall to the
share of _Good fortune_. A battle should have followed, between six
gentlemen on either side, in which _Fortune_ was to be victorious;
_during the combat_, _legs and arms of men_ "_well and lively wrought_",
_were to be let __fall in numbers on the ground_ "_as bloody as might
be_." _Fortune_ marcheth off a conqueror, and a song for the death of
_Manhood_, _Favour_, and _Desert_, concluded the programme. But, alas!
all this preparation was rendered of no avail, by reason of a drenching
thunder-shower, which so "dashed and washed performers and spectators,
that the pastime was reduced to the display of a dripping multitude,
looking like half-drowned rats; and velvets, silks, tinsels, and cloth of
gold, to no end of an amount, fell a sacrifice to this caprice of the
weather."

The evening entertainment at the guildhall was more successful