NEWS OF THE WEEK.
ON Thursday the King and Queen were crowned in the Abbey. The ceremony is "fraught with a pathos so magnificent" that it is difficult to describe it unmoved. Who can fall to be touched by its spiritual and political significance or to remember the weight of ancient and august tradition that lies behind it P Think what it represents, and to what remote shores the waves of feeling set in motion at We stminster will reach before the impulse has sub- sided. Think, too, of the actual magnificence of the scene —the cataracts of colour, the robes, the jewels, the trains, and the plumes. The Coronation service is essen- tially national and free. In similar ceremonies abroad the dominant note is dynastic. Here the dynastic feeling is non- existent. The Coronation is the confirmation and consecra- ,tion of the nation's choice. Historians tell us that in the about of the Westminster boys, " Vivat Rex," flits the spectre of popular election. But the ghost is a true spirit, no chimera, no mere phantom of the brain ; it is a reality. And just as low-spoken words may convey the clearest and most emphatic of sounds, so this whisper across the ages tells us that the King of " the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the Dominions thereto belonging " reigns because it is so willed by an Imperial people.
