foot of standing room occupied--even on roofs and chimneys. Ladies and
children waved handkerchiefs and dropped flowers from balconies, and the
shouts from below and the shouts from above seemed to meet and break into
joyous storm-bursts in the air. Accounts state that Her Majesty "looked
exceedingly well, and that she seemed in excellent spirits, and highly
delighted with the imposing scene and the enthusiasm of her subjects."
One would think she might have been.

She had a great deal to go through with that day. She must have rehearsed
well, or she would have been confused by the multiform ceremonials of
that grand spectacular performance. The scene, as she entered Westminster
Abbey, might well have startled her out of her serene calm, but it
didn't. On each side of the nave, reaching from the western door to the
organ screen, were the galleries, erected for the spectators. These were
all covered with crimson cloth fringed with gold. Underneath them were
lines of foot-guards, very martial-looking, fellows. The old stone floor,
worn with the tread of Kings' coronations and funeral processions, was
covered with matting, and purple and crimson cloth. Immediately under the
central tower of the Abbey, inside the choir, five steps from the floor,
on a carpet of purple and gold, was a platform covered with cloth of
gold, and on it was the golden "Chair of Homage." Within the chancel,
near the altar, stood the stiff, quaint old chair in I which all the
sovereigns of England since Edward the Confessor have been crowned. Cloth
of gold quite concealed the "chunk of old red sandstone," called the
"stone of Scone," on which the ancient Scottish Kings were crowned, and
which the English seem to keep and use for luck. There were galleries on
galleries upholstered in crimson cloth, and splendid tapestries, wherein
sat members of Parliament and foreign Princes and Embassadors. In the
organ loft were singers in white, and instrumental performers in scarlet
--all looking very fine and festive; and up very high was a band of