t even inconceivable to men of earlier days.

For it seemed as if some vast invisible air-way had been flung
straight from the midst of London, down away to the south-west
horizon, where it ran into the faint summer haze thirty miles
away. So level was the line held by the waiting volors on either
side--vast barges shining like silver, hung with the great
state-cloths of modern days--that it appeared as if the eye
itself were deceived, as if there were indeed a pavement of
crystal, a river of glass, so clear as itself to be unseen, on
whose surface floated this navy of a dream such as the world
itself had never imagined.

Now and again, like a fly on water, there darted from one side to
the other a tiny boat, in the blue and silver of the city guards,
or dropped, ducked and vanished; now and again it wheeled, and
came whirling up the line, vanishing at last in the long
perspective. But, for the rest, the monsters waited motionless in
the sunlight, their state-cloths, hung as from the old barges,
from stem to stern, as motionless as themselves, except when now
and again the summer breeze stirred from the south-west, lifting
the lazy streamers, wafting softly the heavy embroideries, and
stirring, even as the wind stirs the wheat, the glittering giants
that waited to do their Lord honour.

Opposite the air-barge where the watcher sat, perhaps a hundred
yards away, floated the royal boat, between a pair of warships,
one blaze of scarlet, blue, and gold, flapping out the Royal
Standard of England, and flashing the glass of the stern-cabin as
the great creature rocked gently now and again in the breeze; and
upon its deck rose up the canopy where the king and his consort
sat together, and the line of scarlet guards visible behind. On
the warships on either side the crew waited, the ship itself
dressed as for a review, every man motionless at his post, with
the crash of brass sounding from the lower decks. And so down the
line the eye of the watcher went again and again, fascinated by
the beauty and the glory, down past where the great ducal barges
hung, each in order, past the officers of state, past the
Parliament barges, down to where the boats, in numbers beyond all
reckoning, faded away into the haze.

To those who looked across to where the man himself sat the
sight must have been no less amazing. For he sat there, in his
new dress of Cardinal's scarlet, on the throne of ceremony
beneath his canopy with his attenda