ROYALTY AS IT WAS AND IS.
Iv there is truth in the gossip of the Morning Post, the Queen's Fancy Ball will be a dazzling spectacle. The spacious stage of the Royal State-rooms is to be fully occupied by actors who will spare no expense to make their adornments rich and graceful. The entry of the guests is to be marshalled with a state and order calculated to enhance and render more striking the magnificence and diversity of their costume. The spectacle promises to excel the masques and pageantry of the Elizabethan age ; and all that has been seen at Court since the mra of the Great Rebellion is poor and commonplace in comparison. Yet does all this profuse mag- nificence serve but to mark how far the distinction between princes and the common people has been obliterated in our times. When men go a mumming, their aim is to go as much out of their every- day selves as possible—to enact a part. When dress and manners drew a broad and palpable line of distinction between Court and City, Queens and Princes assumed the characters of Arcadian swains and nymphs : now the Court seeks to disguise itself in what was the daily wear of the Courts of old times. The Royalty of these days is a plain working-day instrument ; it is only in holyday and carnival time that it ventures, any more than men of mechanical professions, to assume the state of ancient Royalty. The name remains unaltered, but the thing itself has undergone an essential change.
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