NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE Coronation of the Czar was completed at 11 o'clock on Tuesday amidst a magnificent ecclesiastical cere- monial, the new Monarch, according to precedent, first crowning himself and then his consort, who, it will be remembered, is Princess Alix of Hesse, granddaughter of our Queen. The pictorial accounts forwarded over the wires to the London papers blaze with jewels and uniforms and ladies' dresses, the display of diamonds in particular being described as surpassing all precedent, but the central scene of the ceremonial shows the figure of the young Czar after the actual Coronation, and just before he had been touched with the holy chrism, standing upright and alone in the Cathedral while the entire congregation knelt, as did also the vast crowds outside, and indeed all Russia., which, warned of the moment by the electric telegraph and the sound of cannon, was to the furthest limits of the Empire swarming into the churches. No effort was spared to make the ceremonial as religions as possible, and one striking incident in it—the admission of the Czar as .a consecrated person into the "sanctuary," or Holy of Holies behind the altar, which is closed to laymen—is said to have made a deep impression upon his Majesty himself. The crowd of ecclesiastics was great, sixty of the highest dignity being present, besides a multitude of foreign Patriarchs and Bishops, among whom, it will be noted, the Bishop of Peter- borough was assigned the highest place, he taking precedence even,of the Papal Nuncio. One would like, as one reads the stately.descriptions of stately Romps, to exchange them for the briefest report, if it were but truthful, of the Czar's own thoughts, but that gate is closed by a will higher than that of Europe. All we know is contained in the two adjectives, the Czar was impressed but calm.
