guests are aldermen, common councilmen,
members of the Lord Mayor's committee, and the
present chronicler. When I had breakfasted, I
was at liberty to saunter about again, and
wandering from room to room among workmen still
hurrying to and fro with flower-pots, and pictures,
and statues, and articles of furniture, I completely
lost my topographical bearings, and became a
mere piece of human flotsam. On the strange
shores on which I was cast up, I saw many
remarkable things. I think I must have touched
the West Indies, for one island was covered with
pine-apples; another, which glowed with golden
pippins, was no doubt the Hesperides. At
Dorking, I found all the fowls dead, with their
legs turned up in the air; and there was a
strange country where the birds had no feathers,
but only a rosette of white ribbon in their tails,
to fly with. There was an additional peculiarity
about these birds. They carried their heads
under one wing, and their livers under the other.
When, at last, I was cast up in a place where
there was a picture of Queen Caroline, I was
recalled to the knowledge that I was still in
England, and somewhere very close to Guildhall
in the city of London. Where else but in
this stronghold of sturdy sentiment and honest
fair play, would they have hung up a portrait
of Queen Caroline in one of their best rooms?

Every time I turn into the great hall, I find
that the army has executed another manoeuvre;
and the field of the cloth of damask is almost
fully marshalled with all the pièces de résistance,
large and small. I distinctly heard a table groan,
and six waiters hearing it too, went and shored
it up, and told it to keep quiet. I wonder what
those two pulpits are for—can they be—-?

"Lunch is ready, sir?"

I am carried off to more eating and drinking,
and the mystery of those pulpits is still
unexplained. I am ushered into a small apartment
which is crowded with aldermen, and sheriffs, and
chaplains, and legal dignitaries in wigs. I am
the only person in mufti, and I feel that I ought
to have a gown, or a gold chain, or a wig, or
something to entitle me to be where I am. But
the civic dignitaries don't appear to think me in
the way, and don't look "who the deuce are you?"
at me, and by many kind attentions I am
encouraged to feel that I am a civic dignitary
myself. We wait a little time, when suddenly there
enters the well-known gentleman in the fur cap,
who carries the sword; also, the other equally
well-known gentleman, who carries the mace.
Behind them follows a gentleman usher with a
white wand, who announces the Right Honourable
the Lord Mayor, who appears for the first time
in the state robes of his office. If you ask me
how he looked, I answer that he looked jolly.
There was a hearty shaking of hands all round.
Many bluff congratulations were interchanged,
some jokes were passed, and then without
ceremony, or order of our going, we trooped out into
another apartment to lunch. It was a plain
substantial feast of roast beef and boiled
potatoes. I did not think I wanted any lunch,
jut I was told by an experienced person that
he procession was a trying ordeal, and that I had
better "lay in a good solid foundation." So I
accepted the seat that was kindly offered to me
ay the Lord Mayor, and fell to. I should have
thought that his Lordship would have been too
much occupied thinking about all he had to go
through, not to mention the speeches he had to
make, to take any notice of me, or anybody else.
But no, his dignity and his duties sat lightly
upon him; and I say again, he was jolly. He
asked me to take wine, he asked me to join him
in a loving and warming cup of hot elder wine,
to keep out the cold—for "I should find it very
chilly in the carriage." He was collected enough
and thoughtful enough to remember that the
cavalry officers had ridden all the way from
Hounslow that morning, to command his
bodyguard, and sent out for them to share in the feast.
The young swell in the red coat, who sat next to
me, said he never was so thankful for a slice of
beef in his life. "And wasn't the Lord Mayor
a brick for thinking of them?" If we could
only have stopped round this lunch-table, I am
sure we should have spent a very pleasant afternoon.
A little longer, and we should have got
poking each other in the ribs, telling each other
our family affairs, and inviting each other to
dinner at our respective family mansions. But
the sword of the Damocles in the fur cap was
imminent over us, and when the sword pointed
the way, we had to follow.

All the persons about to figure in the procession
are assembled in the outer hall, where they
hang, with coachmen and footmen, on the stairs,
until the City Marshal—who appears to be the
twelve-foot model of all the military heroes whose
portraits we see in Freemasons' Halls—shall
have arranged some little matters of precedence.
I have an opportunity here of inspecting the
Lord Mayor's six footmen, who are just putting
the finishing touch to their new and really handsome
light blue and gold liveries, by pinning on
to each other's breasts white favours as large as
the crown of my hat. They are all very proper
and tall young men, and I am pleased to see that
they are exceedingly nervous, as becomes modest
worth, sensible of the responsibilities of a high
occasion. It struck me that I had never detected
Jeames of Berkeley-square exhibiting any
nervousness on any occasion, but rather that I had
always found him resolutely determined to swell
out his breast, bend out his calves, turn up his
nose, and look coldly and majestically down upon
everybody, his master included. It struck me,
too, that the Lord Mayor's footmen were the
sort of modest, right-minded young men who
would take a shilling in the spirit in which it
was introduced; and being satisfied of this, I did
not think it necessary to put them to the test.

F. M. Anak, of the Anakim, marshalled us very
speedily, and having been taken charge of by
Mr. Common Serjeant, who is good enough to
supplement the favour of representing me in