The taste for luxury and magnificence in English society has
been curiously illustrated this week. The Crown Prince and Princess of Germany have been celebrating their Silver Wedding, delayed by the death of Prince Charles, and entire -columns of description of the festivities have been telegraphed to London, including minute accounts, not only of the ladies'
• diamonds, but of the men's costumes. The Correspondents seem positively intoxicated with the splendour of one reception in the White Saloon, at which every one appeared in fancy dress, the Times' man in particular declaring that one party of masqueraders, who represented the English Queen Elizabeth and her Court, but forgot Shakespeare, Raleigh, Bacon, and Burleigh, " came like speechless, yet eloquent shadows, and so they departed." An "eloquent shadow" dressed as a Beef- eater must have been worth seeing. The celebration of the Silver Wedding is a graceful custom, and the ceremonial was, doubtless, worthy of record as an incident of foreign Court life ; but the appetite for finery which cannot wait even for letters, but insists on telegraphic bulletins about " puffed doublets " of red velvet, is, in an age like this, a strange one. There are evidently people extant who not only take delight in seeing a great dross pageant which is natural enough, as natural as delight in any other exhibition of colour, but in reading a description of one. The- Court of Germaity, we perceive, omits in its triumphs the slave who told the Roman conqueror that he, too, was mortal, and yet Berlin could easily supply one. The first Socialist found in the next street would answer admirably, and need only say, "I am the outcome !" to be more impressive than the slave.
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