As it is, he who enters and stays awhile becomes a convert to the doctrine of Total Depravity. He gets blood-thirsty himself, and feels like snatching up some one of the million weapons that are stored there and killing somebody. The articles preserved with so much care are all suggestive of blood. It is a Moloch of a place; but one must see it, all the same.
The most cheerful place in the great structure is the jewel room, or tower, as it is called. It isn’t very much of a room, but there is a great deal in it which is of interest. Here are kept the regalia appertaining to the throne. In glass cases very carefully guarded are all the crowns of the royal family, and the scepters and things which they display on state occasions, and a rare lot they are.
THE JEWEL TOWER.
THE ROYAL JEWELS.
The prevailing impression among those not used to royalty is that the King and Queen and the rest of their “royal nibses,” as an American would irreverently say, go about dressed in velvet robes, covered with jewels, with crowns upon their heads; that when the Queen goes to bed at night she removes the crown, or a dozen maids of honor do it for her, and that she resumes it the first thing in the morning, before she comes down to breakfast. A moment’s reflection will show any one the impossibility of anything of the kind. A crown would be no protection for the head, and velvet robes would be exceedingly warm in summer, and not warm enough in winter; and besides were the Queen to wear a crown with some millions of dollars’ worth of precious stones in it, some enterprising footpad would have it in no time, and then what would she do?