14 MARCH 1874, Page 11

THE CROWD IN THE SNOW.

pAGEANT under- difficulties has at least this advantage, — that it tests much more effectually the good-will both of the deviser of the pageant and of those for whom it is devised, awl leaves them perhaps even better satisfied with each other than they would have been if everything had gone smooth. That the Queen and the Grand Duchess should drive in an open carriage, with smiling, pleasant faces, on a bitterly raw day in Mardh, through a snow-storm, for an hour and a half, was a far greater proof of their wish to please the people of London thanaaimiIer procession under a bright sun and with a warm spring air. Awl that the people of London should stand about in crowds as deneeae the streets could possibly have held even if there had been no lor slush to stand in and no prospects of cold, cough, pleurisy, croup, and all the other ills that arise out of similar proceedings, meet have shown the Queen and her new daughter-in-law that Londe* has a far more sincere delight in Royalty and its offshoots than they would have had any right to infer from a similar exhibition on a fine spring day. "Circumstance, that unepiritual god," must be admitted, we suppose, to have a good deal to say to the popu- larity of all institutions ; but, unquestionably, such a day as Thursday shows that it is Circumstance of a very respectable, and by no means of a capricious type, which draws the Royal Fatailyte