For these reasons, which ought to be satisfactory to any reflective mind, the crowns and articles of like nature are kept in the tower, and are only worn on state occasions, when the public want a free show.
At all other times the Queen dresses like any other lady, with a regular dress, and bustles, and all that sort of thing, and a bonnet, and she dresses frightfully plain, so all the milliners and modistes say, too plain for their trade; for Victoria, to a certain extent, sets the fashion, which the court follows.
But in these cases you shall see the Queen’s crown, a cap of purple velvet enclosed in hoops of silver, surmounted by a ball and cross, and glittering with actual diamonds. In the center is an immense sapphire, and in front is a famous heart-shaped ruby, said to have been worn by the Black Prince. I don’t know the value of this article, or where he stole it, but if Victoria gets hard-up and wants to raise money, I presume the Jews in Petticoat Lane would advance a million or two on it, and take their chances. Queens have done this before now, and all the crown jewels in Europe have been in the hands of the Israelites at different times; but I rather think Victoria will worry through. She has an income of many thousands of pounds a year, and is very economical. If I remember aright, she sent the starving Irish a thousand pounds, which was about her income for an hour. And then an admiring Parliament, to make it good to her, voted her thirty thousand pounds sterling, which the people accepted without a murmur. She finds profit in liberality.
Then there is St. Edward’s Crown, the Prince of Wales’s, the ancient Queen’s Crown, the Queen’s Diadem, that of Charles the Second, and a dozen or two others, with scepters and rods, and all sorts of things which are carried before, or behind, or on one side or the other, of Kings and Queens, on occasions of great solemnity, when the people are to be impressed with a sense of the importance of these individuals to the world at large. The famous Koihnoor, stolen from an East India Prince, some years since, is there—in glass, which is a swindle. We wanted, and expected, when we paid our sixpence, to see the genuine article, not a base imitation. It is as it is at side-shows at a circus, you are allured inside by a picture of a vast giraffe, nipping boughs from trees, and when you have paid and are in, you are shown a stuffed giraffe, who can no more eat boughs from tall trees than he could preach a funeral sermon. Possibly we should have demanded our money back, but we didn’t.
SIR MAGNUS’ MEN.