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174 rose in deafening tumult from the crowd, nor did there appear a single dissentient voice. In fact, after all that can be said upon the subject, feeling is the only true eloquence. The passions of the crowd were strongly excited: the fainting of the duke; the agitation of Elvira; and the speech of Lord Edmund, who was the hero of the day, absolutely had driven them distracted. They shouted again and again that Elvira, and Elvira alone, should be Queen, and, forming a triumphal car, placed her in it, and dragged her along to Westminster Abbey, where the ceremony of the coronation was appointed to take place. This venerable pile, which had stood for centuries, and resisted alike the war of nature, and the destroying hand of innovation, with which the barbarous taste of the middle ages had endeavoured to destroy its grandeur, shone forth in all its original splendour, and afforded another magnificent proof of the length of time the labours of man survive the term of his fragile existence.

It had been a brilliant sight, when Westminster Hall was crowded with the nobles of