gold-and-velvet crown; then, down the center, the broad roadway kept for the procession by the military and police, the former seen as a thin red streak at either edge of the two black masses of people; and finally this roadway filled with the flashing brilliancy of the procession as it passes on from Palace to Abbey, amidst the tumultuous roar in which the nation's loyalty finds its inadequate expression.

By 10 o'clock everything was practically ready for the pageant of the day to begin. The Yeomen of the Tower had been marched into the Palace; a guard of honor of 500 blue-jackets had taken up its position inside the Palace-gates; a detachment of the Scots. Guards had marked off an immense square just outside; the troops had been disposed along the whole of the route; the Abbey itself was filled with its vast and distinguished congregation; and the people outside were in high-strung expectation. First came the Indian Princes and their suites from Hyde Park, attired in the many colored, gem-decked turbans and flowing vestments of their native land. The Maharajah and Maharanee of Kuch Behar and the Maharajah Holkar, whose shoulders were covered with bullion woven into his tunic, were recognized and loudly cheered. But, apart from the personalties of individuals, the subject that gave rise to the most excited comment and the greatest amount of wonder was the turban of his Royal Highness the Rao of Kutch, which, when the sun flashed upon it, really blazed with the scintillating lights of diamonds, rubies and emeralds. Next came the King's procession-a disappointment, it must be confessed, for the carriages were closed.-Still, it was an illustrious company-the Kings of Denmark, the Hellenes, the Belgians, and of Saxony; the heirs to the thrones of Austria-Hungary, Sweden, Portugal and Greece; the reigning Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and Princes of the Royal Families of Italy, Greece and Spain.

But of unequalled magnificence and interest for the English nation was the Queen's procession-or rather, the Queen and her escort of Princes-which, at half past eleven, swept out of the Palace-gates up Constitution-hill, and so on in the midst of the people. There were the Queen's sons, grandsons, and sons-in-law, an illustrious body guard indeed,-worth of the Sovereign of a world-wide empire; four of them heirs in a direct succession to two of the most powerful thrones that have ever been set up in the world. The Crown Prince of Germany, in his white uniform of a

cuirassier of the Guard, with the Imperial crest in his helmet, and his Field-Marshal's bâton in his hand; the Grand Duke of Hesse, in the blue uniform of a German General; Prince Christian, in red; Prince Albert Victor of Wales, in the blue and gold, of the 10th Hussars; Prince George, in navy blue and gold; the Duke of Connaught, as a Major-General; and the Duke of Edinburgh, as an Admiral; the Prince of Wales, in the full dress of a British FieldMarshal, with the other Princes in brilliant appendages of their military and naval rank: these formed the body-guard, at once princely and of her own family, which escorted the Queen to the scene of her Jubilee thanksgiving. But even this bare recital gives an imperfect idea of the pageant. For the picture we have outlined must be filled in with lance and sabre, with gaily caparisoned charger, with nodding crest and plume, and with every attribute of military pomp and royal magnificence. Thus did the Queen move in state from the Palace to the Abbey; and now, if we can imagine the scene, we may see her and her escort pass beneath the venerable porch, where a very different scene meets the eye, and where the boisterous tumult of the crowd is exchanged for the solemn silence of the sanctuary.

Amid the organ

There is one spot in the Abbey to which all eyes are turned It is where the Queen sits in the chair in which she was crowned, with the Princes of her family, the Kings who have come to do her honor, and her peers and commoners around her engaged in a solemn ceremonial, the very simplicity of which increases its solemnity. One point that strikes the mind at once is that the heart and core of this magnificent display, the lady whose persor alty is present in all minds, is the most simply attired of all, her simple white bonnet being her only concession to the brightness of the occasion. notes the voice of the Archbishop of Canterbury is heard offering up the prayer composed by him, in which thanksgiving for the past and supplication for the future are happily blended into something which helps us to realize in a reverent spirit the significance of the scene before us. The service itself is brief, and presents little that can be described in detail until we come to the very end, when an interesting and probably unique incident, certainly an unexpected one, occurs. As the Queen rises, the Prince of Wales steps forward and salutes her on the hand,.receiving in return a kiss on the cheek. The Crown Prince and the Grand Duke of Hesse pay their homage likewise. Then, carried away by the impulse of the moment, her

Majesty embraces all the Princes and Princesses of her family, even calling back her sons-in-law, the Crown Prince and the Grand Duke, to confer upon them the privilege they have failed to claim.

The return from the Abbey was as triumphal a progress as the journey from the Palace. Whitehall is scarcely described adequately by any language that has been employed in respect of the narrower thoroughfares of the route. Compared with the vast area covered by the crowd, even the broad roadway kept clear by the troops was but a narrow chasm, along which it seemed impossible that the procession could make its way. In Pall Mall and St. James' street all the resources of clubland were brought into operation, and it is not too much to say that the scene of grace and beauty opened up to the Queen as she turned around from Charing Cross into Pall Mall will never be paralleled. There was, perhaps, less of tumultuous cheering, in these aristocratic regions than in Piccadily, Regent street, and Trafalgar square; but that loyalty which was not so plainly manifested to the ear was even more plainly manifested to the eye. When Piccadilly was reached the scene of an hour or two before reproduced itself; and when the Queen's carriage passed finally within the precinct of St James Park, there was a burst of cheering from more than 10,000 people, who had congregated in the vast area of Hyde Park Corner. So far as the Queen was concerned the ceremony of the day was now over. prolonged into the afternoon and night and early morning.

But for the people it was to be evening, and far away into the

As twilight deepened into such darkness as these short summer nights bring with them, the streets of London burst forth in a great blaze of illumination, produced by means which are themselves curiously typical of the progress of the last half century. Great flaming gas-jets lit up the tall facades of our mercantile palaces, while the electric light, poised high above like a midnight sun, or tracing its way through foliage and flowers, like fairy lights held by invisible hands, might have been seen at many points in the long main thoroughfares or in the quiet aristocratic squares. To tell of the crowds of people who moved, for the most part, in awe-struck silence, through the illuminated streets, or to describe in detail the effect of the illuminations themselves, is to attempt to portray in precise language what had much better be left to the imagination. It will be enough to say that from first to last, as a state pageant, as a religious ceremonial, as a popular festival, as a political event,

and as demonstrating the personal affection which forms so large a part of the loyalty of the English people to their Queen-as illustrating, moreover, the material progress of the nation in the past fifty years, and so celebrating, a national no less than a Royal Jubilee - the commemoration in which the empire on Tuesday engaged, with the metropolitan pageant as its centre, was a transcending and supreme success.

The streets were crowded until dawn with people desirous of witnessing the illumination. Even at that hour many were again walking over the route to view at leisure the scene of Tuesday's display. Although some became boisterous towards the close of the evening, the crowd generally was thoroughly orderly, and kept continually moving. The rowdy element would make a rush with a view of causing a stampede; but beyond a momentary confusion nothing serious resulted. The arrests of disorderly persons were extremely few, and the people hurt during the night did not in any way approach the number who were crushed in the daytime.

The most novel and picturesque feature of the celebration was, perhaps, the series of beacon fires which blazed upon the principal inland heights and the loftiest promontories around the coast. The signal rocket shot up from Malvern beacon at ten o'clock, and was visible to watchers in ten counties around. The signal was flashed on from point to point till it reached the crags of Shetland and Orkney across the sea in the north and to Land's End in the south, while fires were burning along all the chief mountain ranges of the country. The ceremony of lighting the Malvern beacon fire was preceded, according to custom, by a little allegorical prelude. At nine o'clock a procession was formed on the terrace at the eastern base of the hill, and a number of the principal inhabitants, bearing torches, wound their way up the height to a plateau known as Ann's Well. Here they halted, and the National Anthem was sung by thousands of voices, on which a venerable "hermit of the hill" emerged from the hill fastness and inquired the cause of this disturbance of his repose, and after a reply by a youthful "fairy of the spring," the intruders proceded on their way: the procession dividing at this point, one portion turning towards the north and ascending to the top of the North Hill, where the rockets were to be fired, and the other proceeding as directed as circumstances permitted up the Worcestershire beacon to light the bonfire.-Lon don Freemason.

THE CIRCLE, PARALLEL LINES, AND POINT.

BY BLAZING STAR.

Of these Dr. Oliver says: "The symbol of a Point within a Circle has sometimes been invested with an astronomical reference. Thus it is said that the Point in the Circle represents the Supreme Being, the Circle indicates the annual circuit of the Sun, and the Parallel Lines mark out the Solstices, within which that circuit is limited. And they deduce from this hypothesis this corollary : that the Mason, by subjecting himself to due bounds, in imitation of that Glorious Luminary, will not wander from the path of duty." This, as an explanation, is quite correct, the greatest error being the ascription of the Point to the Supreme Being rather than the precise object-the Sun or Solar God of our System, which it represents. The astronomical sign of the Sun all must readily recognize, it being the very same, too, used by printers to denote a complete rest at the end of a sentence or paragraph-the rest expressing the Sun's absolutely stationary condition as contrasted with his apparent course of travel through the Signs of the Zodiac which form the circle enclosing him-the Tropics furnishing Lines Parallel to limit his North and South declination.

Mackey (Manual of the Lodge, Rev. Ed., pp. 56-7) says: "The Point within a Circle is an interesting and important symbol in Freemasonry, but it has been so debased in the interpretation of it given. in the modern lectures, that the sooner that interpretation is forgotten by the Masonic student the better it will be. The symbol is really a beautiful but somewhat abstruse allusion to the old Sun worship, and introduces us for the first time to that modification of it known among the ancients as the worship of the Phallus.

"The Phallus was an imitation of the male generative organ. It was represented by a column, which was surrounded by a Circle at its base, intended for the cteis, or female generative organ. This union of the phallus and the cteis, which is well represented by the Point within the Circle, was intended by the ancients as a type of the prolific powers of Nature, which they worshiped under the united form of the active, or male principle, and the passive or female principle. Impressed with this idea of the union of these Vol. 67.-No. 6.-2.