bother about the embassadors forming part of the royal procession. They all detest it, think they ought not to have been called upon to assist, and the poor representatives of the smaller courts do not at all fancy the expense of fine equipages, or the mortification of exhibiting mean ones. This arrangement was matter of negotiation for several days, and (he Lord knows why) the government pertinaciously insisted on it. Public opinion has declared against it, and now they begin to see that they have done a very foolish thing, odious to the corps diplomatique and unpleasing to the people.

June 29th.-The coronation (which, thank God, is over) went off very well. The day was fine, without heat or rain— the innumerable multitude which thronged the streets orderly and satisfied. The appearance of the abbey was beautiful, particularly the benches of the peeresses, who were blazing with diamonds. The entry of Soult* was striking. He was saluted with a murmur of curiosity and applause as he passed through the nave, and nearly the same as he advanced along the choir. His appearance is that of a veteran warrior, and he walked alone, with his numerous suite following at a respectful distance, preceded by heralds and ushers, who received him with marked attention, more certainly than any of the other embassadors. The queen looked very diminutive, and the effect of the procession itself was spoiled by being too crowded; there was not interval enough between the queen and the lords and others going before her. The bishop of London (Blomfield) preached a very good sermon. The different actors in the ceremonial were very imperfect in their parts, and had neglected to rehearse them. Lord John Thynne, who officiated for the dean of Westminster, told me that nobody knew what was to be done except the archbishop and himself (who had rehearsed), Lord Willoughby (who is experienced in such matters), and the duke of Wellington,

* Marshal Soult, once the antagonist of Wellington in Spain, represented the king of the French on this occasion.

and, consequently, there was a continual difficulty and embarrassment, and the queen never knew what she was to do next. They made her leave her chair and enter into St. Edward's Chapel before the prayers were concluded, much to the discomfiture of the archbishop. She said to John Thynne, "Pray tell me what I am to do, for they don't know;" and at the end, when the orb was put into her hand, she said to him, What am I to do with it?" "Your majesty is to carry it, if you please, in your hand." "Am I?" she said; "it is very heavy." The ruby ring was made for her little finger instead of the fourth, on which the rubric prescribes that it should be put. When the archbishop was to put it on, she extended the former, but he said it must be on the latter. She said it was too small, and she could not get it on. He said it was right to put it there, and, as he insisted, she yielded, but had first to take off her other rings, and then this was forced on; but it hurt her very much, and as soon as the ceremony was over, she was obliged to bathe her finger in iced water in order to get it off.

The noise and confusion were very great when the medals were thrown about by Lord Surrey, every body scrambling with all their might, and none more vigorously than the maids of honor. There was a great demonstration of applause when the duke of Wellington did homage. Lord Rolle, who is between eighty and ninety, fell down as he was getting up the steps of the throne. Her first impulse was to rise, and when afterward he came again to do homage, she said: “May I not get up and meet him?" and then rose from the throne, and advanced down one or two of the steps to prevent his coming up, an act of graciousness and kindness which made a great sensation. It is, in fact, the remarkable union of naïveté, kindness, nature, good nature, with propriety and dignity, which makes her so admirable and so endearing to those about her, as she certainly is. I have been repeatedly told that they are all warmly attached to her, but that all feel the

impossibility of for a moment losing sight of the respect which they owe her. She never ceases to be a queen, but is always the most charming, cheerful, obliging, unaffected queen in the world. The procession was very handsome, and the extraordinary embassadors produced some gorgeous equipages. This sort of procession is incomparably better than the old ceremonial which so much fuss was made about, for the banquet would only have benefited the privileged few and the rich, and for one person who would have witnessed the procession on the platform, five hundred enjoyed the sight of this. In fact, the thing best worth seeing was the town itself, and the countless multitudes through which the procession passed. The chancellor of the exchequer told me that he had been informed £200,000 had been paid for seats alone, and the number of people who have flocked into London has been estimated at five hundred thousand. It is said that a million have had sight of the show in one way or another. These numbers are possibly exaggerated, but they really were prodigious. From Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey, by the way they took, which must be two or three miles in length, there was a dense mass of people; the seats and benches were all full, every window was occupied, the roofs of the houses were covered with spectators, for the most part well dressed, and, from the great space through which they were distributed, there was no extraordinary pressure, and consequently no room for violence or ill-humor. In the evening I met Prince Esterhazy, and asked him what the foreigners said. He replied that they admired it all very much: "Strogonoff and the others don't like you, but they feel it, and it makes a great impression on them; in fact, nothing can be seen like it in any other country." I went into the park, where the fair was going on; a vast multitude, but all of the lower orders; not very amusing. The great merit of this coronation is, that so much has been done for the people; to amuse and interest them seems to have been the principal object.

LXI.

BATTLE OF THE ALMA.-MCCARTHY.

[The peace of Victoria's reign was not seriously interrupted until the outbreak of the Crimean war, in 1854. The natural desire of Russia to extend her power to the Dardanelles, and to open a way for her commerce into the Mediterranean by encroaching upon the Turkish dominions, both in Europe and Asia, aroused the jealousy of the Western Powers, and led England and France to combine against her. The war was carried on principally around Sebastopol, a powerful fortress in the peninsula of the Crimea, in southern Russia, and the battle of the Alma was the first of a series of battles which were fought for the possession of that fortress.]

THE invasion of the Crimea, however, was not a soldier's project. It was not welcomed by the English or the French commander. It was undertaken by Lord Raglan out of deference to the recommendations of the government; and by Marshal St. Arnaud out of deference to the emperor of the French, and because Lord Raglan did not see his way to decline the responsibility of it. The allied forces were therefore conveyed to the south-western shore of the Crimea, and effected a landing in Kalamita Bay, a short distance north of the point at which the river Alma runs into the sea. Sebastopol itself lies about thirty miles to the south; and then more southward still, divided by the bulk of a jutting promontory from Sebastopol, is the harbor of Balaklava. The disembarkation began on the morning of September 14, 1854; it was completed on the fifth day; and there were then some 27,000 English, 30,000 French, and 7,000 Turks, landed on the shores of Catherine the Great's Crimea. The landing was effected without any opposition from the Russians. On September 19 the allies marched out of their encampments, and moved southward in the direction of Sebastopol. They had a skirmish or two with a reconnoitering force of Russian cavalry and Cossacks; but they had no business of genuine war until they reached the nearer bank of the Alma. The Russians, in great

strength, had taken up a splendid position on the heights that fringed the other side of the river. The allied forces reached the Alma about noon on September 20. They found that they had to cross the river in the face of the Russian batteries, armed with heavy guns on the highest point of the hills or bluffs, of scattered artillery, and of dense masses of infantry which covered the hills. The Russians were under the command of Prince Mentschikoff. It is certain that Prince Mentschikoff believed his position unassailable, and was convinced that his enemies were delivered into his hands when he saw the allies approach, and attempt to effect the crossing of the river. He had allowed them, of deliberate purpose, to approach thus far. He might have attacked them on their landing, or on their two days' march toward the river. But he did not choose to do any thing of the kind. He had carefully sought out a strong, and what he considered an impregnable, position. He had found it, as he believed, on the south bank of the Alma; and there he was simply biding his time. His idea was that he could hold his ground for some days against the allies with ease; that he would keep them there, play with them, until the great re-enforcements he was expecting could come to him; and then he would suddenly take the offensive and crush the enemy. He proposed to make of the Alma and its banks the grave of the invaders. But, with characteristic arrogance and lack of care, he had neglected some of the very precautions which were essentially necessary to secure any position, however strong. He had not taken the pains to make himself certain that every easy access to his position was closed against the attack of the enemy. The attack was made with desperate courage on the part of the allies, but without any great skill of leadership or tenacity of discipline. It was rather a pell-mell sort of fight. in which the headlong courage and the indomitable obstinacy of the English and French troops carried all before them at last. A study of the battle is of little profit to the ordinary