Leslie, and Fitzroy. About nine, the Commander-in-Chief entered from Hyde Park Corner, with the Duke of Cambridge, and their aides-de-camp. Then came the Duke of Cumberland, in his Light Dragoon uniform. A few minutes before ten, a 12-pounder announced the King, and the whole army shouldered arms. King George came in his private carriage, with General the Duke of Kent, and Teddington Volunteer the Duke of Clarence. He came at the gate at Kensington, where His Majesty mounted his charger, and rode forward, preceded by the Life Guards and the Royal grooms with four led horses, elegantly caparisoned in caparisons that were not odious. He was attended by the Princes, and followed by Queen Charlotte, and Princesses Augusta and Elizabeth, in an open carriage. Princesses Sophia and Mary, and the Princess of Gloucester, also came. Opposite the entrance of Kensington Gardens the King was met by his son of York and a brilliant following. He was joined by the French Princes, Monsieur and the Princes de Condè, de Bourbon, and de Berri, on horseback—detesting the whole English assemblage, no doubt, but rejoicing in anything that promised mischief to their friend the First Consul and his revolutionary friends. There, too, rode the gallant Dumouriez.
A salute of twenty-one guns from the Artillery Company announced the King’s entrance to the Park, and a second cannon his arrival at the centre of the line. The officers saluted, the corps presented arms, and the bands played the National Anthem. A third cannon, and the corps shouldered and then supported arms. The King then proceeded to the right of the line, and passed along from right to left, each corps carrying arms as His Majesty arrived near the right of the corps. While the King passed along the front the music played a variety of martial tunes.
The grandest part of the spectacle was when the King descended the hill to repass, at the “end” of the Serpentine (the report says “the bottom,” but I suppose that is to be translated as above), to the corps on the left of the line, which were stationed along the footway to Kensington Gardens, with their front towards the water. By this time an October fog had partially risen, and the whole procession and the immense crowd came well into sight. “The coup d’œil,” says the reporter of that day, “was grand beyond description,” and he then of course endeavours to describe it, and decidedly proves his case so far as he was personally concerned. But the significance of the sight, Twelve Thousand Armed Freemen in presence of their King, was the real grandeur.
On the signal of a seventh gun, volleys were fired by battalions from centre to flanks, and on the eighth there went up three tremendous and unanimous cheers, amid the waving of hats, hands, and kerchiefs, and “God Save the King” from all the bands went once more throbbing into the air. A ninth gun, and the corps wheeled backwards on their left by divisions, and having passed His Majesty in the prescribed order, proceeded to quarters. This was about half-past one, and the King and his party went by Rotten Row to “Buckingham House,” followed by the crowd, whose aroused national sympathies broke out into incessant and enormous shouting. It is stated that no accidents occurred. The report dwells upon the fact, that the multitude was vastly swelled by accumulations from the country, everybody in a circle of twenty miles having gathered, and “many persons” having come “as much as one hundred miles” to be present. The “circle” of Saturday was widened, thanks to certain diagonal lines of iron.
The second review, on the next day but one, paraded a larger number of men, and though the fog—(expressly sent by Bonaparte, who
“Made the quartern loaf and Luddites rise,
And filled the butchers’ shops with large blue flies”)
—was very gloomy and scowling, it gave way in the presence of British valour, and the day was as splendidly successful as its predecessor. Son Frederick had his father’s orders to convey to the Volunteers the expression of their King’s highest approbation and heartfelt satisfaction, and the words of the General Order may appropriately be cited: “The spirit of loyalty and patriotism on which the system of the Armed Volunteers throughout the country was originally founded, has risen with the exigencies of the times, and at this moment forms such a bulwark to the constitution and liberties of the country, as will enable us, under the protection of Providence, to bid defiance to the unprovoked malice of our enemies, and to hurl back, with becoming indignation, the threats which they have presumed to vent against our independence, and even our existence, as a nation.” It is a long sentence this, and I do not know whose pen helped our Son Frederick to such a breather, but it contained truths for that time, and truths that will serve again in this present year of Grace and month of June.
ONCE UPON A TIME.
Only look at Gaffer Grey
Creeping slowly on his way,
With a staff to help him stand,
Leant on with a shaking hand;
With a step that fears to meet
The pebbles of the village street;
With a cheek that falleth in,
And a very peaked chin;
With a forehead made of wrinkles
Carved in crosses, cranks, and crinkles,
And a voice so thin and mumbling
That his glee might pass for grumbling.
See his eyes so blear and dim,
And his beard so grey and grim;
See his legs, all lean and lank,
Dwindled down to skin and shank.
Poor old Gaffer Grey is labelled
With the words that tune my rhyme:
Read him over—you’ll discover
Nought but “Once upon a time.”
I wander’d to a spot of earth,
Where Fame had crowned the ruin-crags,
Where ravens in their shrieking mirth
Flapp’d their black wings like conquerors’ flags
