difficult, become impossible; when the rents of apartments double
themselves, and apartments are often not to be had at any price; when
the face of the cabman clouds if you say you want him by the hour, and
clears if you add that you will make it all right with him; when every
form of service begins to have the courage of its dependence; and the
manifold fees which ease the social machine seem to lubricate it so much
less than the same fees in April; when the whole vast body of London
groans with a sense of repletion such as no American city knows except
in the rare congestion produced by a universal exposition or a national
convention. Such a congestion is of annual occurrence in London, and is
the symptomatic expression of the season; but the symptoms ordinarily
recognizable in May were absent until June in the actual year. They were
said to have been suppressed by the reluctance of the tardy spring, and
again by the king's visit to Ireland. As the king is the fountain of
social prosperity it is probable that he had more to do with delaying
the season than the weather had; but by what one hears said of him he
would not have willingly delayed it. He is not only a well-meaning and
well-doing prince, one hears from people of every opinion, but a
promoter of peace and international concord (especially with France,
where his good offices are believed to have been peculiarly effective),
and he is, rather more expectedly, a cheerful sovereign, loving the
gayety as well as the splendor of state, and fond of seeing the world
enjoy itself.

It is no betrayal of the national confidence to repeat what every one
says concerning the present outburst of fashion, that it is a glad
compliance with the king's liking; the more eager because of its long
suppression during the late queen's reign and the more anxious because
of a pathetic apprehension inspired by the well-known serious
temperament of the heir-apparent to the throne. No doubt the joyful