The Coronation bonfires were lighted on Monday night, and as
at the celebrations of the Jubilee and Diamond Jubilee, proved that after all the most primitive form of illumination is the most effective. Everything combines to make a bonfire on a beacon hill exciting to the senses and the imagination. First, the situation of the bonfire is in almost all cases highly romantic. It stands on the summit of some wind- swept hill or wild moor, far away from the homes of men. Yet the pageant of flame peoples the hilltop with men and women. On the North Downs, for example, on Monday night what was even more impressive than .the actual fire was the spectacle of bands of people converging in the dark- ness to the immemorial hearth of the bonfire. Down number- less paths and glades they came trooping, and the hilltop, usually utterly silent on summer nights save for the song of the nightingale in some little brake or thicket, was alive with the sound of voices and the soft pad of footsteps on the turf. So trooped primitive man to the Beltane fires at the sight of the summer solstice, and so men believed they trooped to the Witches' Sabbaths on the Downs.
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