uffed with straw and hung up to scare kites.--But
hark, what a dead silence hath fallen on them at once!"

"The procession pauses," said Raleigh, "at the gate of the Chase, where
a sibyl, one of the FATIDICAE, meets the Queen, to tell her fortune. I
saw the verses; there is little savour in them, and her Grace has been
already crammed full with such poetical compliments. She whispered to
me, during the Recorder's speech yonder, at Ford-mill, as she entered
the liberties of Warwick, how she was 'PERTAESA BARBARAE LOQUELAE.'"

"The Queen whispered to HIM!" said Blount, in a kind of soliloquy; "Good
God, to what will this world come!"

His further meditations were interrupted by a shout of applause from the
multitude, so tremendously vociferous that the country echoed for miles
round. The guards, thickly stationed upon the road by which the Queen
was to advance, caught up the acclamation, which ran like wildfire to
the Castle, and announced to all within that Queen Elizabeth had entered
the Royal Chase of Kenilworth. The whole music of the Castle sounded
at once, and a round of artillery, with a salvo of small arms, was
discharged from the battlements; but the noise of drums and trumpets,
and even of the cannon themselves, was but faintly heard amidst the
roaring and reiterated welcomes of the multitude.

As the noise began to abate, a broad glare of light was seen to appear
from the gate of the Park, and broadening and brightening as it came
nearer, advanced along the open and fair avenue that led towards the
Gallery-tower; and which, as we have already noticed, was lined on
either hand by the retainers of the Earl of Leicester. The word was
passed along the line, "The Queen! The Queen! Silence, and stand fast!"
Onward came the cavalcade, illuminated by two hundred thick waxen
torches, in the hands of as many horsemen, which cast a light like that
of broad day all around the procession, but especially on the principal
group, of which the Queen herself, arrayed in the most splendid manner,
and blazing with jewels, formed the central figure. She was mounted on a
milk-white horse, which she reined with peculiar grace and dignity; and
in the whole of her stately and noble carriage you saw the daughter of
an hundred kings.

The ladies of the court, who rode beside her Majesty, had taken especial
care that their own external appearance should not be more glorious than
their rank and the occasion altogether demanded, so that