e bailiff of
Talyllyn with the surcoat, and the silver spurs of Llewellyn; the high
constable of Aber-glas-llyn, with his gorgeous display of antique
liveries; the tawny coats of the Bishop of St. Asaph, who came
to ride the boundaries of the old episcopal demesne of Aberkilvie,
in company with the retainers of Sir Morgan; the Mayor and Corporation
of Machynleth, in their crimson robes;--all alike passed unheeded:
and the spectators were first roused from the fascination of the
departing spectacle by the clangor of the band, which with the Barmouth
sea-fencibles--two troops of dragoons and the _cortege_ of the Sheriff
of Carnarvonshire brought up the rear of the cavalcade.

As fast as the procession cleared the ground, with the fluent motion of
water, the crowd closed up in its wake--all eager to press after it
into the church. Bertram, who had shared deeply in the general
admiration and pity expressed for Miss Walladmor, sympathized no less
with the national feeling belonging to the day. Who can blame him? The
spectacle of a whole multitude swayed by one feeling, however little
the object of that feeling may be approved by the judgment of the
spectator, appeals irresistibly to his sympathies, if he be not more
than usually cold-hearted: and I remember well that, though myself a
faithful son of the Scotish church, I was once seduced by such an
occasion into an involuntary act of idolatrous compliance with popery.
It was at Orleans: the day was splendid: the bells proclaimed a
festival: a vast procession of a mixed composition, religious and
military, was streaming towards the cathedral; and by a moral
compulsion, rather than by any physical pressure of the crowd, I was
swept along into the general vortex. Suddenly an angle of the road
brought me into such a position with respect to all who were in advance
of my station, that I could see the whole vast line bent into the form
of a crescent, and with its head entering at the great-doors of the
cathedral: I gazed on the tossing of the plumes and the never ending
dance of heads succeeding to heads as they plunged into what seemed the
dark abysses of the church: one after one I beheld the legions and
their eagles, the banners and the lilies of France swallowed up by the
cathedral: then, as I came nearer and nearer, I could hear the great
blair of the organ--throwing off its clouds of ascending music, like
incense fuming from an altar: nearer still I could look through the
h