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72 with the Purse-bearer, and the Lyon King-of-Arms, and the national anthem, and the royal salute; for the palace has awakened and is "mimicking its past."

"Should the weather be wet the troops will be cloaked at the discretion of the commanding officers." They print this instruction as a matter of form, and of course every man has his mackintosh ready. The only hope lies in the fact that this is a national function, and "Queen's weather" is a possibility. The one personage for whom the Scottish climate will occasionally relax is Her Majesty Queen Victoria, who for sixty years has exerted a benign influence on British skies and at least secured sunshine on great parade days. Such women are all too few! In this wise enters His Grace the Lord High Commissioner to open the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland; and on the same day there arrives by the railway (but traveling first class) the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, Free, to convene its separate Supreme Courts in Edinburgh. He will have no Union Jacks, Royal Standards, Dragoons, bands, or pipers; he will bear his own purse and stay at a hotel; but when the final procession of all comes, he will probably march beside His Grace the Lord High Commissioner, and they will talk together, not of dead-and-gone kingdoms, but of the one at hand, where there are no more divisions in the ranks,