The Duchess of Edinburgh was introduced to the capital of
her new country on Thursday, in a snowstorm that blotted out a good deal of the gaiety and splendour of the reception. Oxford Street and Regent Street, which were as Russian in their decora- tions as if the Czar had just annexed the British Islands and given orders for a display of Russian feeling, were really decorated with great taste,—the latter, no doubt, owing to the wise policy of leaving the general guidance of the street decorations in the hands of a single man. The pavilion at the centre of Regent Circus, with ita crowd of flowers, was a very handsome structure, and the festoons of paper flowers which connected it with the houses at each corner of Oxford Street would have looked ex- tremely gay on any sunny day. Some of the Regent-Street tradesmen, too, showed good taste on their own accounts, with their scarlet cloth and the patterns in black and gold upon it, their crowds of flags, their Russian eagles, Scotch thistles, and Irish shamrocks. The snow and the heavy black clouds, which only partially lightened towards the end of the ceremonial, were really hard upon Londoners making their first genuine attempt to be graceful as well as gay. Like the bouquets showered from the house-tops upon the Grand Duchess, the effort just fell short of its aim, through the discouraging state of the weather. But the greatest sight of all, the people, could hardly have been so impressive in the sunshine as it was in the snow, and the gracious demean- our of the Queen and her new daughter-in-law would under a brillant sky certainly not have been so impressive. Only the ladies-in-waiting were not inspired by royal courage, and shivered openly in their carriage. The illuminations of the evening were brilliant, but rather exceptionally fatal, the crowd being chiefly concentrated on the lines of the procession, lines not spacious enough for the hundreds of thousands who endeavoured to see the illuminations.
