multiform life, swayed, clung, murmured, moved, jostled, trampled,--
the beings of the little hour!

High from the battlements against the weltering beam floated Edward's
conquering flag,--a sun shining to the sun. Again, and a third time,
rang the trumpets, and on the balcony, his crown upon his head, but
his form still sheathed in armour, stood the king. What mattered to
the crowd his falseness and his perfidy, his licentiousness and
cruelty? All vices ever vanish in success! Hurrah for King Edward!
THE MAN OF THE AGE suited the age, had valour for its war and cunning
for its peace, and the sympathy of the age was with him! So there
stood the king; at his right hand, Elizabeth, with her infant boy (the
heir of England) in her arms, the proud face of the duchess seen over
the queen's shoulder. By Elizabeth's side was the Duke of Gloucester,
leaning on his sword, and at the left of Edward, the perjured Clarence
bowed his fair head to the joyous throng! At the sight of the
victorious king, of the lovely queen, and, above all, of the young
male heir, who promised length of days to the line of York, the crowd
burst forth with a hearty cry, "Long live the king and the king's
son!" Mechanically Elizabeth turned her moistened eyes from Edward to
Edward's brother, and suddenly, as with a mother's prophetic instinct,
clasped her infant closer to her bosom, when she caught the glittering
and fatal eye of Richard, Duke of Gloucester (York's young hero of the
day, Warwick's grim avenger in the future), fixed upon that harmless
life, destined to interpose a feeble obstacle between the ambition of
a ruthless intellect and the heritage of the English throne!