gorgeousness.  All these rode on in pairs.  Then came alone Audeley, lord-chancellor, and behind him the Venetian ambassador and the Archbishop of York; the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Du Bellay, Bishop of Bayonne and of Paris, not now with bugle and hunting-frock, but solemn with stole and crozier.  Next, the lord mayor, with the city mace in hand, the Garter in his coat of arms; and then Lord William Howard—­Belted Will Howard, of the Scottish Border, Marshal of England.  The officers of the queen’s household succeeded the marshal in scarlet and gold, and the van of the procession was closed by the Duke of Suffolk, as high constable, with his silver wand.  It is no easy matter to picture to ourselves the blazing trail of splendour which in such a pageant must have drawn along the London streets,—­those streets which now we know so black and smoke-grimed, themselves then radiant with masses of colour, gold, and crimson, and violet.  Yet there it was, and there the sun could shine upon it, and tens of thousands of eyes were gazing on the scene out of the crowded lattices.

Glorious as the spectacle was, perhaps however, it passed unheeded.  Those eyes were watching all for another object, which now drew near.  In an open space behind the constable there was seen approaching “a white chariot,” drawn by two palfreys in white damask which swept the ground, a golden canopy borne above it making music with silver bells:  and in the chariot sat the observed of all observers, the beautiful occasion of all this glittering homage; fortune’s plaything of the hour, the Queen of England—­queen at last—­borne along upon the waves of this sea of glory, breathing the perfumed incense of greatness which she had risked her fair name, her delicacy, her honour, her self-respect, to win; and she had won it.

There she sate, dressed in white tissue robes, her fair hair flowing loose over her shoulders, and her temples circled with a light coronet of gold and diamonds—­most beautiful—­loveliest—­most favoured perhaps, as she seemed at that hour, of all England’s daughters.  Alas! “within the hollow round” of that coronet—­

  Kept death his court, and there the antick sate,
  Scoffing her state and grinning at her pomp. 
  Allowing her a little breath, a little scene
  To monarchise, be feared, and kill with looks,
  Infusing her with self and vain conceit,
  As if the flesh which walled about her life
  Were brass impregnable; and humoured thus,
  Bored through her castle walls; and farewell, Queen.

Fatal gift of greatness! so dangerous ever! so more than dangerous in those tremendous times when the fountains are broken loose of the great deeps of thought; and nations are in the throes of revolution;—­when ancient order and law and tradition are splitting in the social earthquake; and as the opposing forces wrestle to and fro, those unhappy ones who stand out above the crowd become the symbols of the struggle,