NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE Coronation Durbar at Delhi, in some ways the most imposing ceremonial of this generation, has been carried through this week with a success which reveals in Lord Curzon an exceptional faculty for organisation. He has had to collect, feed, and canton a vast army, of which less than fifty thousand were under British military discipline, to arrange a civil show such as in scenic magnificence the world has scarcely ever seen, and to soothe away a thousand maddening disputes about precedence raised by men to whom precedence is more than it was to the courtiers of Louis XIV. of whom Saint-Simon wrote. He has succeeded even in this last most oppressive duty, and the two great functions—the triumphal entry into Delhi on Monday, and the grand Durbar on Thursday—passed off without a hitch. Down the Chandni Chowk, the " Silver Road," which is the grandest of Indian streets, streamed a procession in which was included all the white rulers of India, and nearly every Indian Prince of sovereign rank, Holkar and the Gaikwar being the only two important exceptions. All rode, as beseemed a grand Asiatic celebration, upon elephants, and every elephant carried a gold or silver howdah, often flashing with gems, and was clothed in cloth of gold or silver, which under that sky shone as in Europe even gold and silver cannot be persuaded to shine. The Englishmen were, of course, in the fullest uniform, and the Princes, with the single exception of the Nizam, who was dressed in plain black, displayed those wonderful robes so seldom seen even in the East, robes blazing with gold and gems, and embroideries almost more costly still. Everything was on the scale which impresses the Asiatic mind,—elephants in endless lines, soldiers in armies, retinues in tens of thousands, and myriads of delighted people, all assembled to hail in Asiatic fashion the accession of their British lord. There was but one distinctively Western feature in the whole display. Beside the Viceroy in the same howdah sat Lady Curzon, beside the Duke of Connaught, the King's brother, his Duchess, a thing not seen in India since Alexander retreated from the Punjab.
