THE KING AND QUEEN.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 473, 3 April 1909, Page 10

THE KING AND QUEEN.

A PEN PICTURE. A correspondent of ail Australian, paper gives a graphic description of the King and Queen as they appeared at tho last opening of Parliament. You get time here, he says, for a close scrutiny of the Empire's. Royalty. Thoy advance very slowly up tho carpeted way, through the crowded Royal Gallery, bowing frequently and very gravely to the Standing throng on cither sido. And, seeing them clearly a few feet away, you realise, as somehow you failed to do before, from descriptions and portraits and photographs, that tho King and Queen aro, old. Your first and last impressions are ago and care. Thoy. pace very slowly, and with ; profound dignity, yet as the Queen bows she smiles faintly a weary smile. The King, his white .beard close-clipped, his .'head almost entirely 'bald,. is- very stout' without being cumbersome, and in a sense robust; but as you look at'him you understand how it is that ■■his' slight,colds causo so much anxiety, and : leod to tho instant cancellation of important engagements; and,' more than that, you admire the courage which enables him to accomplish such ordeals as his _ recent journey, in tho depth of a northern winter, to •Germany. His Majesty looks a good wn years older than any photograph I have ever seen of him, and the Queen still more than that". The' King, a pleasant-faced, stout, dignified old man, no longer active; the Queen istill beautiful, but disappointing, not in herself, for her years are many, but because ■she strikes you, as so much older' and more careworn than you havo over gathered from iher recent portraits and photographs. Sho is still beautiful, but despite the fact that ■lier hair is free ftnvi grey, her beauty is the ibeauty of age. AH .the bloom is gone, which ! is not, after all, at all wonderful, for is sho not the grandmother of two big boys in the 'Navy? She is superbly dressed in a black .gown embroidered with gold and silver, with ■a;robe of ruby velvet, and wears,a';crown:of : .diamonds, including the priceless Cullinan , 'stone.