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in point of taste and invention, the former carried 

 it hollow. First marched Britannia ; then came a 

 band of music ; then the flag ; then the Blue King 

 and Queen — the Queen splendidly dressed in 

 white and silver (in scorn of the opposite party, her 

 train was borne by a little girl in red); his Majesty 

 wore a full British Admiral's uniform, with a white 

 satin sash, and a huge cocked hat with a gilt paper 

 crown upon the top of it. These were immediately 

 followed by "Nelson's car," being a kind of canoe 

 decorated with blue and silver drapery, and with 

 " Trafalgar " written on the front of it ; and the 

 procession was closed by a long train of Blue 

 grandees (the women dressed in uniforms of white, 

 with robes of blue muslin), all Princes and Prin- 

 cesses, Dukes and Duchesses, every mother's child 

 of them. 



The Red girls were also dressed very gaily 

 and prettily, but they had nothing in point of 

 invention that could vie with Nelson's Car and 

 Britannia ; and when the Red throne made its 

 appearance, language cannot express the contempt 

 with which our landlady eyed it. £< It was neither 

 one thing nor t'other," Miss Edwards was of opi- 

 nion. " Merely a few yards of calico stretched 

 over some planks — and look, look, only look at 

 it behind ! you may see the bare boards ! By way 

 of a throne, indeed ! Well, to be sure, Miss Ed- 

 wards never saw a poorer thing in her life, that 

 she must say ! " And then she told me, that some- 



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