mpares
very favourably with the one at Buckingham Palace. St. Patrick's Hall,
too, with its elaborate painted ceiling, is an exceedingly handsome
room, as is the Long Gallery. At my father's first Drawing-Room, when I
officiated as page, the perpetual kissing tickled my fancy so, that,
forgetting that to live up to my new white-satin breeches and lace
ruffles I ought to wear an impassive countenance, I absolutely shook,
spluttered and wriggled with laughter. The ceremony appeared to me
interminable, for ten-year-old legs soon get tired, and ten-year-old
eyelids grow very heavy as midnight approaches. When at length it
ended, and my fellow-page was curled up fast asleep on the steps of the
throne in his official finery, in glancing at my father I was amazed to
find him prematurely aged. The powder from eight hundred cheeks and
necks had turned his moustache and beard white; he had to retire to his
room and spend a quarter of an hour washing and brushing the powder
out, before he could take part in the procession through all the
staterooms which in those days preceded supper. My father was still a
remarkably handsome man even at fifty-six years of age, with his great
height and his full curly beard, and I thought my mother, with all her
jewels on, most beautiful, as I am quite sure she was, though only a
year younger than my father.

The great white-and-gold throne-room brilliant with light, the glitter
of the uniforms, and the sparkle of the jewels were attractive from
their very novelty to a ten-year-old schoolboy, perhaps a little
overwhelmed by his own gorgeous and unfamiliar trappings. We two pages
had been ordered to stand quite motionless, one on either side of the
throne, but as the evening wore on and we began to feel sleepy, it was
difficult to carry our instructions into effect, for there were no
facilities for playing even a game of "oughts and crosses" in order to
keep awake. The position had its drawbacks, as we were so very
conspicuous in our new uniforms. A detail which sticks in my memory is
that the guests at that Drawing-Room drank over three hundred bottles
of my father's sherry, in addition to other wines.

My brother and I were not allowed in the throne-room on ordinary days,
but it offered such wonderful opportunities for processions and
investitures, with the sword of state and the mace lying ready to one's
hand in their red velvet cradles, that we soon discovered a back way
into it. Should any o