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 XIV.

THE INVESTITURE.

January 4.

THERE was bound to come a time in the succession of brilliant spectacles which constitute this Imperial Assemblage when the eye was satiated with colour, the mind bewildered by interminable pageantry, the ordinary medium of expression exhausted by the excess of splendour upon which superlatives had been expended in lavish profusion. Some of us, I fancy, felt that this point had been reached last night as we gazed upon the magnificent scene in the Diwan-i-Am, where was held the ceremony of the Investiture of the new recipients of the Orders of the Star of India and the Indian Empire. Even the flexible and abundant English language has its limits. So, too, has the patience of readers, who must be growing wearied of adjectival narratives. If, therefore, this account of the Investiture is restrained and unemotional, it must not be assumed that the ceremony failed to fulfil the great expectations formed concerning it. Rather is the restraint a concession to those upon whom a series of glowing descriptions must be beginning to pall. Perhaps, too, a quieter vein would more correctly reproduce the sentiments of the majority of those present at the function. Nothing could