Then He
Led Us Across The Fine, Beautiful Quadrangle To The Door Of The Museum,
And Waited For Us There Till We Came Out.
By this time the space was
brilliant with the confronted bodies of troops, those about to be
relieved of
Guard duty, and those come to relieve them, and our guide
got us excellent places where we could see everything and yet be out of
the wind which was beginning to blow cuttingly through the gates and
colonnades. There were all arms of the service - horse, foot, and
artillery; and the ceremony, with its pantomime and parley, was much
more impressive than the changing of the colors which I had once seen at
Buckingham Palace. The Spanish privates took the business not less
seriously than the British, and however they felt the Spanish officers
did not allow themselves to look bored. The marching and countermarching
was of a refined stateliness, as if the pace were not a goose step but
a peacock step; and the music was of an exquisitely plaintive and tender
note, which seemed to grieve rather than exult; I believe it was the
royal march which they were playing, but I am not versed in _such_
matters. Nothing could have been fitter than the quiet beauty of the
spectacle, opening through the westward colonnade to the hills and woods
of the royal demesne, with yellowing and embrowning trees that billowed
from distance to distance. Some day these groves and forests must be for
the people's pleasure, as all royal belongings seem finally to be; and
in the mean time I did not grudge the landscape to the young king and
queen who probably would not have grudged it to me.
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