The illumination at night was very imperfect,—the people evidently having
regarded the occasion as a religions one, and hardly suitable for illumination. The chief interest was concen- trated on St. Paul's, and it is possible that for those who scaled the fiercely contested heights of Ludgate Hill and reached St. Paul's Churchyard, the spectacle of the Cathedral under the very transient gleams of light cast by the lime-lights and the red light at the ball, may have been grand, as the Times says it was. To those, however, who, like the present writer, were forced back when half-way up the hill, and who could only watch the fitful blaze of the red light from the lower ground, there was very little worth seeing. The shape of the dome was marked out by a treble row of coloured ship-lanthorns and now and then the red fire blazed forth in the ball, looking like a detached fire-balloon, and not lighting up the lines of the cathedral at all, and that was all. By night, as by day, the admirable rules enforced by the police protected the people against the ordinary dangers of these celebrations. The exclusion of all carriages from the City proper, and the strict limitations under which they were admitted even at the West End, made London positively safer in the large crowds of Tuesday than it has ever been on like occasions before.
