of almost religious solemnity which struck every observant onlooker.  No profusion of superlative adjectives can avail to reproduce such scenes, any more than words, no matter how skilfully chosen, can convey the tone of a violin in the hands of a master.  Even the mere number of those who took part in the demonstration cannot be guessed with any real accuracy.  There was a procession of men, whose fine physique and military smartness were noticed by visitors from England, which was reported to have taken three hours to pass a given point marching in fours, and was estimated to be not less than 100,000 strong, while those who went independently to the ground or crowded the route were reckoned to be at least as many more.  The Correspondent of The Times declared that “it was hardly by hyperbole that Sir Edward Carson claimed that it was one of the largest assemblies in the history of the world.”

But the moral effect of such gatherings is not to be gauged by numbers alone.  The demeanour of the people, which no organisation or stage management could influence, impressed the English journalists and Members of Parliament even more than the gigantic scale of the demonstration.  There was not a trace of the picnic spirit.  There was no drunkenness, no noisy buffoonery, no unseemly behaviour.  The Ulster habit of combining politics and prayer—­which was not departed from at Balmoral, where the proceedings were opened by the Primate of All Ireland and the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church—­was jeered at by people who never witnessed an Ulster loyalist meeting; but the Editor of The Observer, himself a Roman Catholic, remarked with more insight that “the Protestant mind does not use prayer simply as part of a parade;” and The Times Correspondent, who has already been more than once quoted, was struck by the fervour with which at Balmoral “the whole of the vast gathering joined in singing the 90th Psalm,” and he added the very just comment that “it is the custom in Ulster to mark in this solemn manner the serious nature of the issue when the Union is the question, as something different from a question of mere party politics.”

The spectacular aspect of the demonstration was admirably managed.  A saluting point was so arranged that the procession, on entering the enclosure, could divide into two columns, one passing each side of a small pavilion where Mr. Bonar Law, Sir Edward Carson, Lord Londonderry, and Mr. Walter Long stood to take the salute before proceeding to the stand which held the principal platform for the delivery of the speeches.  In the centre of the ground was a signalling-tower with a flagstaff 90 feet high, on which a Union Jack measuring 48 feet by 25 and said to be the largest ever woven, was broken at the moment when the Resolution against Home Rule was put to the meeting.