and maizes, and cerises. I saw beneath me the
Modern Perishable Time — the shimmering
lacquered veneer upon Eternity's pine-plank. I
looked down upon a generation that travelled
by first-class express, that rode in miniature
broughams ; that lived in semi-detached villas,
that worshipped at proprietary chapels, that
dined à la Russe and had left off supping
altogether, that sent its girls to be educated at
ladies' colleges, and its boys at gymnasia ; that
wondered at its servant-maids when they
consulted " cunning men," or crossed the hands of
gipsey crones with silver, yet went itself to
spirit-rapping séances, and sat at the feet of
lying mediums ; a generation that was learned
in the Origin of Species, and the Theory of
Development, and the Common Objects of the Sea-
Shore, but didn't know how to make pies or
puddings, and had forgotten the art of darning
stockings — a generation complacently willing to
hold with Professor Boofs or Dr. MacDiluvius
that Father Adam was a hundred and twenty-
six feet high and thirty thousand years old,
and far too well educated to believe in Noah's
Ark or the Burning Bush. O smiling, flirting,
gossiping, sceptical, well-dressed, well-educated
generation, go your ways, for I can make
nothing at all of you ! So I turn upon my claw,
and strain my eyes to see what I can see in the
choir of Saint George's Chapel.

It was like rising, with a yawn, from the pert
verbiage and flippant repetitions of the Court
Circular to plunge into the pages of Froissart.
He, and Monstrelet, and Brantôme, and old
Baker — ay, and Camden, and Holinshed, and
Stow — seemed to have kept guard at the gates
of the inner chapel to bar ingress to the
impertinent moderns. Error and exaggeration!
you may cry out: nothing is safe from the
invasion of the Vandals. These Danish and
Russian officers in fat bullion epaulettes and
wasp-waisted tunics, these officials in Windsor
uniforms, these great court ladies in spreading
trains, do they not also belong to the
generation you have quitted, and, in quitting,
disparaged — the generation that delights in gold
lace, Brussels lace, varnished boots, and mauve
and magenta hues? I answer that all is
subdued, refined, ripened, sobered, mellowed,
antiquated, harmonised here, by the great pervading
shadow of the Order of the Garter. That
famous companionship of ancient chivalry is
omnipresent in the choir. What though I know
those carved pinnacled canopies over the knights'
stalls are not all of mediæval oak, but have been
patched and cobbled up during the Georgian
era? what though I confess that many of the
banners hanging from the roof are of the
emblazonment of modern herald painters? what
though I remember that yon sculptured screen
of alabaster, and yon great painted window, are
things of yesterday, and that among the worn
and half illegible brasses nailed behind the
knights' seats, and telling in quaint old
Norman-French of Bohuns, De Montforts, and De
Courcys, whose blood has been quite dried up
for centuries past, there are new, primly shining
brass plates, as bright and natty as any house
decorator or seal engraver, aping the mediæval,
might screw on to his door — plates that give
the names and addresses of German kings and
princes, of an Emperor of the French, of a King
of Sardinia, and of a Sultan of the Turks, yet
does the antique Garter shadow swallow up,
and make all chime in with the chivalric
departed. The temporary seats of red baize, that
looked coarse and Cremorne-like in the choir, are
here toned down to a dull ruby tint : the group
of bishops, and deans, and canons behind the
communion-rails don't look like the mere
surpliced parsons of Lutheran rites. Over some of
their vestments are thrown robes of blood-
coloured silk, with the Garter's badge 'broidered on
the shoulder. I am glad that I am short-sighted,
and that I cannot discern whether his Grace of
Canterbury wears a wig. I hope he doesn't.
The flock of clergymen " compose" — to use a
painter's term — so well, and are in such excellent
" keeping," that I fancy I see glimmering there
to the north a throng of priests in stoles, and
rochets, and copes, stiff with gold and embroidery
— that I can see the golden crosiers glisten, the
jewelled mitres sparkle, the episcopal rings
scintillate. How brave the pattens and chalices
gleam on the table ! There are candlesticks.
How about the tapers ? Are there to be any
wax-lights ? But hush ! avaunt ye mummeries
of papistry. Behind me I hear a harsh irate
croaking. A Low Church, Calvinist, Caledonian
jackdaw is inveighing against the sinful
conduct of the corporation of London on
the Seventh of March, in permitting Mr.
Rimmel, the perfumer, to erect his tripodical
incense-burners on London-bridge. "A
sad and gloomy day will it be, indeed, for
England," says the Calvinist jackdaw, "if
incense is to become one of the institutions of
this Protestant land." A sad and gloomy day,
indeed ! The Inquisition, thumbscrews, the
chop on Tower-hill and the stake in Smithfield,
would all follow as a matter of course, and in
the twinkling of a censer. The Calvinistic
jackdaw is implacable. There has been too
much of this sort of thing lately, he says. A
stop must be put to it. The public pulse must
be felt. The public voice must be heard. He
is only appeased when I point out to him that
her Grace the Duchess of Inverness, with a
tartan mantle thrown over her, has just been
conducted to her seat. " Scotia" is satisfied, and
the incense grievance is temporarily dismissed.

When, one after another, the grandees had
swept into the choir and settled down in their
stalls or on their benches, when the chapel
proper was full, and the Royal Family procession
had been followed by that of the bridegroom,
and that royal young gentleman stood, apart, on
the dais waiting for his bride, I would, did
etiquette, to say nothing of natural history,
permit a jackdaw to have hands, have clapped
them for sheer joy and exultation. As it was, I
flapped my wings, to the discomposure of my
neighbours, and was nearly crying "caw" before
my time. In a low whisper I asked the police-