very moment of his departure, the celestial intellect was very feebly
illuminated, and it became necessary to call a cabinet council on the
grand state question, "Where was the Emperor to sit?" The hammer-cloth
happened to be unusually gorgeous; and, partly on that consideration,
but partly also because the box offered the most elevated seat, was
nearest to the moon, and undeniably went foremost, it was resolved by
acclamation that the box was the imperial throne, and, for the
scoundrel who drove,--he might sit where he could find a perch. The
horses, therefore, being harnessed, solemnly his imperial majesty
ascended his new English throne under a flourish of trumpets, having
the first lord of the treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester
on his left. Pekin gloried in the spectacle; and in the whole flowery
people, constructively present by representation, there was but one
discontented person, and _that_ was the coachman. This mutinous
individual audaciously shouted, "Where am _I_ to sit?" But the
privy council, incensed by his disloyalty, unanimously opened the door,
and kicked him into the inside. He had all the inside places to
himself; but such is the rapacity of ambition that he was still
dissatisfied. "I say," he cried out in an extempore petition addressed
to the Emperor through the window--"I say, how am I to catch hold of
the reins?"--"Anyhow," was the imperial answer; "don't trouble
_me_, man, in my glory. How catch the reins? Why, through the
windows, through the keyholes--_anyhow_." Finally this contumacious
coachman lengthened the check-strings into a sort of jury-reins
communicating with the horses; with these he drove as steadily as Pekin
had any right to expect. The Emperor returned after the briefest of
circuits; he descended in great pomp from his throne, with the severest
resolution never to remount it. A public thanksgiving was ordered for
his majesty's happy escape from the disease of a broken neck; and the
state-coach was dedicated thenceforward as a votive offering to the god