se four bands entered the spacious hall with the utmost order,
a short pause being made, that the spectators might satisfy their
curiosity as to each quadrille before the appearance of the next. They
then marched completely round the hall, in order the more fully to
display themselves, regulating their steps to organs, shalms, hautboys,
and virginals, the music of the Lord Leicester's household. At length
the four quadrilles of maskers, ranging their torch-bearers behind them,
drew up in their several ranks on the two opposite sides of the hall,
so that the Romans confronting the Britons, and the Saxons the Normans,
seemed to look on each other with eyes of wonder, which presently
appeared to kindle into anger, expressed by menacing gestures. At the
burst of a strain of martial music from the gallery the maskers drew
their swords on all sides, and advanced against each other in the
measured steps of a sort of Pyrrhic or military dance, clashing their
swords against their adversaries' shields, and clattering them against
their blades as they passed each other in the progress of the dance. It
was a very pleasant spectacle to see how the various bands, preserving
regularity amid motions which seemed to be totally irregular, mixed
together, and then disengaging themselves, resumed each their own
original rank as the music varied.

In this symbolical dance were represented the conflicts which had taken
place among the various nations which had anciently inhabited Britain.

At length, after many mazy evolutions, which afforded great pleasure to
the spectators, the sound of a loud-voiced trumpet was heard, as if
it blew for instant battle, or for victory won. The maskers instantly
ceased their mimic strife, and collecting themselves under their
original leaders, or presenters, for such was the appropriate phrase,
seemed to share the anxious expectation which the spectators experienced
concerning what was next to appear.

The doors of the hall were thrown wide, and no less a person entered
than the fiend-born Merlin, dressed in a strange and mystical attire,
suited to his ambiguous birth and magical power.

About him and behind him fluttered or gambolled many extraordinary
forms, intended to represent the spirits who waited to do his powerful
bidding; and so much did this part of the pageant interest the menials
and others of the lower class then in the Castle, that many of them
forgot even the reverence due to the Queen's p