metropolitan cathedral announces the death of the last son of
George the Third who probably will ever reign in England. He
was a good man: with feelings and sympathies; deficient in
culture rather than ability; with a sense of duty; and with
something of the conception of what should be the character of
an English monarch. Peace to his manes! We are summoned to a
different scene.

In a palace in a garden--not in a haughty keep, proud with the
fame, but dark with the violence of ages; not in a regal pile,
bright with the splendour, but soiled with the intrigues, of
courts and factions--in a palace in a garden, meet scene for
youth, and innocence, and beauty--came the voice that told the
maiden she must ascend her throne!

The council of England is summoned for the first time within
her bowers. There are assembled the prelates and captains and
chief men of her realm; the priests of the religion that
consoles, the heroes of the sword that has conquered, the
votaries of the craft that has decided the fate of empires;
men grey with thought, and fame, and age; who are the stewards
of divine mysteries, who have encountered in battle the hosts
of Europe, who have toiled in secret cabinets, who have
struggled in the less merciful strife of aspiring senates; men
too, some of them, lords of a thousand vassals and chief
proprietors of provinces, yet not one of them whose heart does
not at this moment tremble as he awaits the first presence of
the maiden who must now ascend her throne.

A hum of half-suppressed conversation which would attempt to