Historical Tales [calibre 5.4.1]

The great Jubilee celebration, however, was reserved for the 21st of June, the chief streets of London being given over to a host of decorators, who transformed them into a glowing bower of beauty. The route set aside for the imposing procession was one long array of brilliant color and shifting brightness almost impossible to describe and surpassing all former festive demonstrations.

NORTH FRONT OF WINDSOR CASTLE.

The line of the royal procession extended from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey, along which route windows and seats had been secured at fabulous prices, while the throng of sightseers that densely crowded the streets was in the best of good humor.

As the procession moved slowly along from Buckingham Palace a strange silence fell upon the gossiping crowd as they awaited the coming of the aged queen, on her way to the old Abbey to celebrate in state the fiftieth year of her reign. When the head of the procession moved onward and the royal carriages came within sight, the awed feeling that had prevailed was followed by one of tumultuous enthusiasm, volley after volley of cheers rending the air as the carriage bearing the royal lady passed between the two dense lines of loyal spectators.

With a face tremulous with emotion the queen bowed from side to side in grateful courtesy to her acclaiming subjects, as did her companions, the Princess of Wales and the German Crown Princess, who had returned to her native land to take part in its holiday of patriotism.

Six cream-colored horses drew the stately carriage in which the royal party rode, the Duke of Cambridge and an escort accompanying it, while a body-guard of princes followed, the Prince of Wales being mounted on a golden chestnut horse and sharing with his mother the cheers of the throng. Preceding this escort and the queen's carriage was a series of carriages in which were seated the sumptuously appareled Indian princes, clothed in cloth of gold and wearing turbans glittering with diamonds and other precious gems. Prominent in the group of mounted princes was the German Crown Prince Frederick, who succeeded to the throne as Emperor Frederick III. in the following March and died in the following June, in less than a year from his appearance in the Jubilee. But there was no presage of his quick-coming death in his present appearance, his white uniform and plumed silver helmet attracting general admiration, while he sat his horse as proudly as a knight of old and was covered with medals and decorations significant of his prowess in battle. A gorgeous cavalcade of natives of India completed the procession, than which none of greater brilliance had ever been seen in London streets.

In the Abbey were gathered from nine to ten thousand spectators, of the noblest families of the land, and dressed in their most effective attire, while the lights brought out the glitter of thousands of gleaming gems. The queen herself, while dressed in rich black, wore a bonnet of white Spanish lace that glittered with diamonds.

As she entered the Abbey the organ pealed forth the strains of a triumphal march. There followed a Jubilee Thanksgiving Service, brief and simple, and special prayers by the Archbishop of Canterbury. As a finale to the impressive scene the queen, moved to deep emotion, embraced with warm affection the princes and princesses of her house, and, with a deep bow to her foreign guests, with- drew from the scene, to return to the palace over the same route and through similar demonstrations of enthusiastic loyalty.

All over England and Ireland and in the colonies the day was celebrated by joyous celebrations, and in foreign lands, especially in the United States, the British residents fittingly honored the festive occasion.

On the following day, in Hyde Park, London, the queen drove in state down a long and happy line of twenty-seven thousand school-children, who had been made happy by a banquet and various amusements, besides being given a multitude of toys. The special feature of the occasion was the presentation by the queen of a specially manufactured jubilee-ring, which she gave with a kind speech to a very happy twelve-year-old girl who had attended school for several years without missing a session.

There was also a review of fifty-six thousand volunteers at Aldershot, a grand review of one hundred and thirty-five warships at Spithead, and other ceremonies, one of the chief of which was the laying by the queen, on the 4th of July, of the foundation stone of the Imperial Institute in the Albert Hall, this Institute being intended to stand as a sign of the essential unity of the British Empire.

The well-loved queen of the British nation was to live to celebrate in health and strength another jubilee year, that of the sixtieth anniversary of her reign, a distinction in which she stands alone in the history of the island kingdom. George III., who came nearest, died a few months before the completion of his sixty years' period. Had he lived to fulfil it there would have been no celebration, for he had become a broken wreck, blind and hopelessly insane, a man who lived despised and died unmourned.