that of the famous dog and animal painter
whose four-footed friends look down at him
from the walls: faces like that of the Sir David
who invented the most popular toy in the world:
faces from the Science and Art: from South
Kensington, which, as we all know, is Science
and Art: faces from France, from Canada, Rome
India, and a hundred other places.

As we look on the gay and golden spectacle,
and turn towards that pasha's dais, and see
the guests from all climes and countries,
one idea comes to many minds; a recollection
of a good and genial and amiable nobleman
who, not many months back, was wearing the
Irish viceregal crown, and would have looked
forward with delight to this moment. How his
heart would have been in the festival from the
beginning to the end! What state, what
magnificence, he would have thrown into it—what
fêtes and banquetings he would have set on
foot! What music and what dancing, when
that heavy white hair, familiar to so many,
would have been seen in the centre! How he
would have shown off the attractions and done
the honours of his little court! This is a
thought that comes to the mind of many. For
him should this occasion have been; for his heart
was bound up in the country he ruled over; and
we need only recal a golden sunset and a dismal
embarkation, and a sad, almost despairing face,
looking from the vessel which carried him away
from the country he loved, and carried him away
to die.

Now, I hear the hum of distant martial music,
and the yet fainter but more inspiriting sound
of distant cheering. Then the scarlet and ermine,
the privy council clotted gold, the May morning
bonnets, glitter and rustle with excitement.
The hum and chatter of voices full of expectation
travels on softly down the glass aisles and
into the great hall. There has been a grand
plunging of military troopers outside, a violent
arrest of fiery horses pulled up suddenly, and
the prince and a royal duke and the vice-king
and all their attendants have descended. From
the outside, the shouting creeps in gradually,
until at last, it comes to its fullest pitch, when
the crimson and gold crowd parts a little, we see
this prince standing modestly under the Egyptian
pasha's canopy, with thirty thousand eyes upon
him. At this moment a speck half way up the dark
orchestra, but which is a very skilful and most
musical speck, gives a signal with what seems
a white pin, and the musical army advances
with the line Old Hundredth. The grand Old
Hundredth travels out in rising waves through
the open end of the hall into the glass cathedral,
then loses itself up and down in the aisles. For
two verses the voices do the battle by
themselves; but, at the third, the trumpets and the
grand brass and the rolling of monster drums
burst out, and every syllable is emphasised with
a stirring crash. It is like the deluge after a
drought.

Then the sun gets up, and the gold and coloured
figures cross, and crowd, and flit past, as some
business is being transacted under that Egyptian
pasha's canopy; for there are addresses to
be read and spoken, and there is much advancing
and backing to be done. Now, the party under
the pasha's canopy breaks up for a time, and the
stiff gold and scarlet and privy council
strait-waistcoats, and the corporate dressing-gowns,
having formed themselves into a procession, take
the prince round to look at the place.

And there is a great deal to see. There
are many charming pictures, and among the
choicest those of which the Queen of Spain has
stripped her palaces, and sent here. Is there
not a hint of many a Velasquez most exquisite,
and of Mr. Stirling, which are worth a
journey to the Escurial to worship! Here is
many a rare Reynolds which Mr. Tom Taylor
might find worth making a note of, and here
are walls covered with noble cartoons of the
severe Munich school. These, with the
photographs and water-colours, and mediæval
objects, are common to many an exhibition held
before; but there is one feature unique—a
noble sculpture gallery, artistic, charmingly
lighted, sufficient to delight Mr. Gibson, and
drive the Royal Academy to despair. A sculpture-
hall, on which you can look down from
a balustrade in a room over head, as if into
a Pompeian court. A sculpture-hall, in which
you can look up to an arching glass roof, and,
half way down again, to the balustrade just
mentioned, which is dotted with small statues. A
sculpture-hall, where I can walk round and
think myself in a Roman palace, to which
these fine objects belong, and not in a temporary
shed where some scattered objects that
have been lent are shown. For here I see
that the Roman studios have been emptied of
their treasures; that Miss Hosmer has sent her
Faun, in toned yellow marble, a marvellous—if
the speech be not impolite—work for a woman.
With Story's wonderful Judith, and a Baby
Girl by Mogni—a pendant for the now famous
Reading Girl. But it is easy to prophesy that
this Baby Girl will be photographed, and
stereoscoped, and binocularised in a hundred ways,
and watched over by policemen specially, and
visited by a steady crowd. This hall and its
contents—the like of which it is no boast to say
tias not been yet seen in these kingdoms—is the
feature of this exhibition.

Then, having seen all that is most curious and
beautiful—in the fashion in which such things
must be seen where there is only a quarter of an
hour to see them—the stiff gold and crimson
strands, which we call the procession, came back
to the pasha's dais. And then, with a crash and
a smash, and a thundering of monster drums, and
the rattle and rolling of little drums, and the
sharp brassy bark of trumpets, the true English
national Old Hundredth, in which musical
and unmusical—people with ears, and people
without, even people with voices, and people
without—can join, then God save the Queen is
sung. Sung! Rather fired off! Discharged!
Salvoed!

And then the glittering mass begins to
dissolve and fade away. The stage, which has been