There is to modern Englishmen something of the ridiculous in
such a scene, and one of the makers of bulletins declares that Barnum is outdone ; but bulletin-makers rarely know history. We English also once loved the brilliantly grotesque. It is time, rather than wisdom, which has taken the childlike out of our tastes. Nothing in the thirty-six processions would have struck the courtiers of Henry VIII. as anything but admirable, and the skilled men who arranged the pageants in which that able King so delighted would have been over- joyed could they have arrayed their showmen in the gold and gems which the wealth of Indian Princes enables them to accumulate. There is, too, one feature in the scene which should of itself arrest all depreciatory criticism. Nothing but genuine, hearty goodwill could have induced these Princes, many of them as proud as Bourbons, to incur the immense expense and trouble of bringing up these cavalcades from the furthest ends of a continent to do honour to King Edward's Coronation " tamasha." Such a show is quite unprecedented, and could not have been arranged even by Major Dunlop Smith's organising skill without the friendliest co-operation of hundreds of the most eminent among Indians.
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