it to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies. His look
Drew audience and attention, still as night,
Or summer's noontide air."

THE WEEK OF AN EMPEROR

The week ending the 8th of June, was the most brilliant that ever
occupied and captivated the fashionable world of a metropolis of two
millions of souls, the head of an empire of two hundred millions. The
recollection runs us out of breath. Every hour was a new summons to a
new _fete_, a new fantasy, or a new exhibition of the handsomest man
of the forty-two millions of Russia proper. The toilettes of the
whole _beau monde_ were in activity from sunny morn to dewy eve; and
from dewy eve to waxlighted midnight. A parade of the Guards, by
which the world was tempted into rising at ten o'clock; a _dejeuner a
la fourchette_, by which it was surprised into _dining_ at three,
(_more majorum;_) an opera, by which those whose hour for going out
is eleven, were forced into their carriages at nine; a concert at
Hanover Square, finished by a ball and supper at Buckingham
palace;--all were among those brilliant perversions of the habits of
high life which make the week one brilliant tumult; but which never
could have been revolutionized but by an emperor in the flower of his
age. Wherever he moved, he was followed by a host of the fair and
fashionable. The showy equipages of the nobility were in perpetual
motion. The parks were a whirlwind of horsemen and horsewomen. The
streets were a levy _en masse_ of the peerage. The opera-house was a
gilded "black hole of Calcutta." The front of Buckingham palace was a
scene of loyalty, dangerous to life and limb; men, careful of either,
gave their shillings for a glimpse through a telescope; and
shortsighted ladies fainted, that they might be carried into houses
which gave then a full view. Mivart's, the retreat of princes, had
the bustle of a Bond Street hotel. Ashburnham House was in a state of
siege. And Buckingham palace, with its guards, cavalcades, musterings
of the multitude, and thundering of brass bands, seemed to be the
focus of a national revolution. But it was within the palace that the
grand display existed. The gilt candelabra, the gold plate, the maids
of honour, all fresh as tares in June; and the ladies in waiting, all
Junos and Minervas, all jewelled, and none under forty-five,
enraptured the mortal eye, to a degree unrivalled in the
recollections of the oldest courtier, and unrecorded in the annals of
quee