Page Head: PREPARATIONS FOR THE CORONATION.]

There never was anything seen like the state of this town; it is
as if the population had been on a sudden quintupled; the uproar,
the confusion, the crowd, the noise, are indescribable. Horsemen,
footmen, carriages squeezed, jammed, intermingled, the pavement
blocked up with timbers, hammering and knocking, and falling
fragments stunning the ears and threatening the head; not a mob
here and there, but the town all mob, thronging, bustling,
gaping, and gazing at everything, at anything, or at nothing; the
park one vast encampment, with banners floating on the tops of
the tents, and still the roads are covered, the railroads loaded
with arriving multitudes. From one end of the route of the Royal
procession to the other, from the top of Piccadilly to
Westminster Abbey, there is a vast line of scaffolding; the
noise, the movement, the restlessness are incessant and
universal; in short, it is very curious, but uncommonly tiresome,
and the sooner it is over the better. There has been a grand
bother about the Ambassadors forming part of the Royal
Procession. They all detest it, think they ought not to have been
called upon to assist, and the poor representatives of the
smaller Courts do not at all fancy the expense of fine equipages,
or the mortification of exhibiting mean ones. This arrangement
was matter of negotiation for several days, and (the Lord knows
why) the Government pertinaciously insisted on it. Public opinion
has declared against it, and now they begin to see that they have
done a very foolish thing, odious to the Corps Diplomatique and
unpleasing to the people.

The Duke and Soult have met here with great mutual civilities,
and it is very generally known that the former did everything he
could to stop the appearance of Croker's article. Gurwood told me
that he begged the Duke to write to Croker and request he would
keep it back. The Duke said, 'I will write because you wish it,
but I tell you that he won't do it. When a man's vanity or his
interest is concerned he minds nobody, and _he_ thinks himself a
cleverer fellow than anybody.' The Duke knew his man, for he
flatly refused, and intimated that though the Duke might be a
better judge of military matters, he (Croker) was the best of
literary.

A great squabble is going on about the Wellington memorial,[12]
in which I have so far been concerned that Lord Tavistock got me
to write the requisition to the Duke o