with tinsel. The Commander-in-Chief, with Japanese, Chinese, and Korean decorations flashing in the sunshine from the breast of his modern uniform, followed by his staff in red coats heavily braided with gold lace, and with white aigrettes waving in their hats, passed, marching proudly at the head of the Imperial body-guard. The final stream of colour showed nobles in blue and green silk gauze; Imperial servants with robes of yellow silk, their hats decorated with rosettes; more mediæval costumes, of original colour and quaint conception; a greater multitude of waving flags; a group of silken-clad standard-bearers bearing the Imperial yellow silk flag, the Imperial umbrella, and other insignia. Then a final frantic beating of drums, a horrid jangling of bells, a fearful screaming of pipes, a riot of imperious discord mingled with the voices of the officials shouting orders and the curses of the eunuchs, and finally the van of the Imperial cortège appeared, in a blaze of streaming yellow light, amid a sudden silence in which one could hear the heart-beats of one's neighbour. The voices died away; the scraping of hurried footsteps alone was audible as the Imperial chair of state, canopied with yellow silk richly tasselled, screened with delicate silken panels of the same colour and bearing wings to keep off the sun, was rushed swiftly and smoothly forward. Thirty-two Imperial runners, clad in yellow, with double mitres upon their heads, bore aloft upon their shoulders the sacred and august person of his Imperial Majesty, the Emperor, to his place of sacrifice and worship in his Temple of Ancestors.
The business of the day had now arrived. Presently the Emperor's bearers stopped, and he alighted at the entrance of a tent of yellow silk, which had been erected at
