There are some scenes which require for the
perfection of their development, a combination
of elements so rarely brought together,
and which would lose so incalculably by the
withdrawal of some one special ingredient,
whose very nature is transitory, that they
can only be seen in their perfection once in
a lifetime, and not always even so often as
that. Nay, one may go even further, and
say that in the whole course of Time there
are certain things which in their entirety, and
taking all the elements which go to make them
up, occur but once, and never happen again
under all the same circumstances, or with all
the same surroundings—as long as Time
endures.

He who had the privilege of being present in
Saint George's Chapel at Windsor, on the tenth
day of March, in this present year, had a chance
which cannot come to him again, and indeed is
not likely to come again to any man. Much has
already been said and written about what took
place on that day, but more remains behind.
Time has carried us on a certain distance since
the events of that day took place. We have drawn
back from the picture whose details we at first
pored into so eagerly, and being further off can
see its general effect much better and very much
more truly. Like everything really grand and
fine, the drama enacted on that day not only bears
the test of calm reflection, but even gains by it.
If we kept that same drama by us for the
Horatian period, it would bear the test.

Consider the argument of this enacted poem,
how interesting it is, and withal how good and
wholesome: Somewhere about twenty-five
years ago, a young girl, then only nineteen years
of age, was crowned Queen of one of the
greatest countries on the face of the globe, and
before this frail tenant of a most mighty throne,
men and women, old and young, the grey-haired
senator, and the soldier in the prime of youth
and strength, bowed their heads, half pleased
at the thought of their own voluntary submission
to a sceptre held by such a young and feeble arm.
By-and-by, this young Queen was married to a
prince who was the very choice of her affections,
and these two lived before the world, doing what
perhaps is just the very best thing any human
being can do—setting a good example; so good
an example, that the court over which they
presided was surely the most incorrupt of which we
have any authentic record in the world's history.
And so it happened that under this most happy
reign the country prospered marvellously, and
did really seem to be favoured among the nations
of the earth: a great prosperity and peace
reigning in it, while troublous times were
known in the other European countries. For
twenty years these two lived continually
together, and in this time five daughters and four
sons were born to them. The harmony of their
lives was at its completest, and their quiet
happiness at its fullest, when suddenly the husband
of the Queen fell ill, and after a sickness too
short to prepare either the Queen herself, or,
indeed, any one else, for the shock, he died. The
grief of his widow, still young, and again as
solitary on the throne as she had been twenty
years before, was of a rare and most absorbing
kind; there has probably been no such royal
sorrow since that of the English king who built
a separate monument at each separate town
where those who bore the body of his beloved
queen rested on the funeral journey—such grief
is a living monument to the memory of a good
man, and speaks more strongly than words or
sculptured records can.

But the children of the dead prince are growing
up around their mother, and the time has
arrived when one of them, the chiefest prince
in all the land, has chosen him a bride, the
fame of whose winning presence and other fair
qualities have so preceded her, that the people
of this most loyal country loved the young lady
almost before seeing her, and received her not
as a welcome stranger, but rather as a friend
well known already, and most anxiously
expected. With every step of ground traversed
between the old town on the river's estuary,
and the castle high up on the same river's
course, the princess made new friends of those
who hurried down to examine the credentials
she brought with her, and which, like the rest
of us, she bore upon her face. There never was
a progress so triumphant as that which the
Princess Alexandra made, from the spot where
she landed on English ground, to her home in
Windsor Castle.

Now this simple—most simple—story of the
love of the Queen for her husband, and of his
loss, must be borne in mind by those who would
understand ALL that there was of interest in
that great pageant and ceremony of the Tenth
of March. That little tale forgotten, the
picture would have been splendid indeed; but it
would have wanted that one touch of shade, of
which many must have felt the effect who hardly
realised what it was that brought it about. Who
knows how far the minds of those who
pronounced that wedding-procession to be the
loveliest sight they had ever seen, were
unconsciously affected by the presence of the dark
figure of the mourning Queen, half concealed in
the pew above the altar?

Those who watched the details of that glorious
pageant, with somewhere down in the
recesses of their hearts an undefined memory of
all that had preceded it, saw a perfect thing
through a perfect medium, and came away
convinced that they might live long and see many
things, but never anything in its own way so
beautiful as that.

One thing very remarkable about that
spectacle, treating it only as a spectacle, was the
great comfort it gave you from its reality. It
was so like the theatre but with everything that
the theatre wants. There were no bad actors
in the parts. The princes were real princes,
and the jewels were real diamonds and pearls.
All that the theatre attempts, spectacularly,
was here thoroughly realised. When you found
a duke announced in the programme, it was
really a duke whom you saw, not a suit of