| <The Saturday Review Feb. 9, 1861>
| <Ladies Spiritual and Temporal>
| <Lord Robert Cecil>
| <pb n="140">
| Some nations have a gift for ceremonial.  No poverty 
| of means or absence of splendour hinders them from 
| making any pageant in which they take part both real 
| and impressive.  Everybody falls naturally into his 
| proper place, throws himself without effort into the 
| spirit of the little drama he is enacting.
| <pb n="141">
| and instinctively represses all appearance of 
| constraint or formality or distracted attention.  This 
| aptitude is generally confined to people of a Southern 
| climate and of non-Teutonic parentage.  In England 
| the case is exactly the reverse.  We can afford to be 
| more splendid than most nations; but some malignant 
| spell broods over all our most solemn ceremonials, 
| and inserts into them some feature which makes them 
| all ridiculous.  Spite of all the appliances of luxury 
| and art, the temper of the people is against them, and 
| they degenerate into either an unmeaning formality or 
| an ill-contrived show.  Something always breaks 
| down, somebody contrives to escape doing his part, 
| or some by-motive is suffered to interfere and ruin it 
| all.
| Tuesday was one of the few occasions on which the 
| English indulge themselves in a pageant, and it 
| furnished an ample illustration of the thorough 
| uncongeniality of the amusement.  The meeting of all 
| the authorities that go to make up the executive and 
| the legislative Government of England, in the midst 
| of a grave crisis, and at the commencement of a year 
| that promises to be eventful, was an opportunity not 
| wanting in grandeur.  There was gathered in that 
| splendid hall plenty of the solid power which is 
| necessary to give reality to a solemn political pageant.  
| But it would have required a very large bump of 
| veneration to have seen anything solemn in the actual 
| spectacle which the House of Lords presented on 
| Tuesday last.  The officials who had the arranging of 
| it seem to have thought a good deal more of 
| gratifying the curiosity of those who wished to see it, 
| than of making the ceremonial itself correspond to 
| what it was supposed to represent.  Theoretically, it 
| was the Sovereign meeting the Estates of the realm to 
| inaugurated grave political deliberations.  But 
| practically, it looked more like a revival of the 
| <hi rend="italic"> Ecclesiazusoe </hi> of Aristophanes 
| than any assemblage known to modern experience.  
| The last thing it resembled was a weighty political 
| occasion.  It was all very well to say that that 
| assembly was the House of Lords; but it was only by 
| a very minute search with a good opera-glass that any 
| Lords were to be discovered.  Half-a-dozen old men 
| in red mantles might be discerned lolling on the 
| lowest bench; but they looked as if they had got there 
| by accident, and felt that they were in the way.  
| Behind them, and above them, and all round them, 
| swarming in every corner cramming every gallery, 
| densely packed on the benches where the hereditary 
| legislators ordinarily sit, were throngs of ladies who 
| formed, and evidently felt that they formed, the main 
| feature of the assemblage.  The eye was wearied with 
| resting on nothing but tarlatans and silks.  An 
| enlightened and travelled Turk who should be anxious 
| to see the Great Council of the nation on the occasion 
| of its most solemn meeting, would certainly report to 
| his friends that the rights of women of which he had 
| heard in America had received their full development 
| in England.  He would at least conclude that they had 
| obtained the privilege of holding a rival Parliament in 
| the neighbourhood of Westminster Hall, and that he 
| had stumbled into the seraglio of the Constitution by 
| mistake, and was listening to the deliberations of the 
| House of Ladies.  The Bench of Bishops, with their 
| feminine apparel and not unfeminine aspect, would be 
| far from destroying the illusion.  He would only 
| conclude that they were eminent females, to whom, 
| by reason of their age and infirmities, a warm corner 
| had been assigned.  The absence of fashionable 
| inflation in their attire, together with its sadder 
| colouring, would probably suggest to him that they 
| were elderly widows.  As for the few old men in red 
| mantles, if he noticed them at all, their deplorable 
| aspect and the obvious shyness and embarrassment of 
| their demeanour would lead him to set them down as 
| the principal slaves or mutes of the imperious sultanas 
| who were flaunting in every colour of the rainbow 
| behind them.
| He would be still more puzzled at our national 
| customs as the ceremonial went on.  He would have 
| an opportunity of seeing the peculiar form in which 
| both our male and female legislators pay homage to 
| their Sovereign.  Gradually the fair throng becomes 
| more and more agitated and animated as the signs of 
| approaching Royalty increase.  The space near the 
| throne fills with the privileged dignitaries, who, 
| except the reporters, are the only male spectators 
| suffered at these mystic rites.  If a man who is neither 
| member of Parliament, peer's son, official, nor 
| connected with the press, wishes to hear the Queen's 
| speech from her own lips, he must submit to a 
| Clodian disguise, and call himself a peeress.  At last 
| the silver trumpets announce that the moment of 
| fruition is at hand for which so many fair lionizers 
| have struggled and squeezed.  Spite of Lord Haddo, 
| Court ceremonial still exacts a definite amount of 
| nudity from a respectful subject.  Various nations 
| have adopted various modes of expressing deference.  
| The Eastern uncovers his feet, the Western his head; 
| the Englishwoman is probably unique in expressing 
| her awe-stricken feelings by exhibiting her shoulders.  
| But the rule is quite rigorous.   It includes alike old 
| and young, smooth and wrinkled, plump and 
| shrivelled.  A soft-footed official glides along the 
| Ministerial benches to frown away any remnant of 
| cloak or shawl to which chilliness or shyness may 
| cling; and at his appearance, as he goes along 
| whispering <q> </q>, a perfect glacier of bare 
| shoulders is simultaneously exposed to the light of 
| day.
| At all events, this is a more noiseless as well as a 
| more graceful tribute of respect than that which the 
| Queen shortly afterwards receives from the 
| representatives of the masculine portion of her 
| subjects.  Here first direction, as soon as she is seated 
| in her throne, is to <p> "command the attendance of 
| the Commons."  </p> Now, the Commons on this 
| occasion are a reality, not a sham.  If they made their 
| appearance, like the House of Lords, by female 
| substitutes, matters would probably go off much more 
| smoothly.  The Speaker and Lord Palmerston, 
| marching in at the head of a fair and bare-shouldered 
| <hi rend="italic"> cortege, </hi> would certainly be a 
| pleasant sight to look upon; but they would not run 
| the same imminent risk of bodily injury either in 
| coming in or going out; or at any rate it would not be 
| so distasteful to be hustled.  As it is, the Commons, 
| no doubt to compensate for the deficient virility of the 
| Lords, vindicate their manliness by a succession of 
| athletic exercises in the course of their passage from 
| their own House to the House of Lords.  Wrestling, 
| racing, and something very nearly approaching to 
| boxing, are all combined in the lively scuffle which 
| constitutes the procession of the Commons.  An 
| increasing murmur, as if made up of the groans of 
| men whose breath was being squeezed out of their 
| bodies, announces to the gentler occupants of the 
| House of Lords the slow and painful approach of the 
| third Estate.  At last a struggle of more than usual 
| length and desperation ends with shooting forward Mr. 
| Speaker, all gleaming in purple and gold, majestic 
| still, though rumpled, into the presence of his 
| Sovereign.  Etiquette requires that he should approach 
| the bar of the House of Lords with three reverential 
| bows; but under the circumstances this is not quite so 
| simple a matter as it seems.  It is difficult to maintain 
| a stately pace with a crowd treading on your heels, or 
| to execute a dignified bow at the moment that a 
| metropolitan member is being propelled, with the 
| force of a catapult, into your back.  Generally, the 
| Speaker is lucky if he reaches the bar of his own 
| accord.  Fortunately, it has been the practice to select 
| for the Speakership men of great endurance, who do 
| not express in their faces all that they are suffering 
| elsewhere.  But the contrast between the Speaker in 
| his official robes, with his countenance composed to a 
| stately dignity beseeming a high functionary, and the 
| pushing, peeping , elbowing, struggling crowd of 
| dusty-looking members behind him, illustrates aptly 
| enough the ludicrous inconsistencies that are sure to 
| make their appearance to spoil any bit of pageantry 
| we attempt in England.   Many improvements might 
| be suggested in the ceremonial which celebrates the 
| meeting of the Sovereign and the Estates of her realm.  
| But it has several stages to go through before it even 
| ceases to be absurd.  That happy result will not be 
| attained till the House of Lords is represented by 
| something else than innumerable ladies in evening 
| costume, and the House of Commons by something 
| better than a mob of grown-up schoolboys.