PEN-NOTES AND PENCILLINGS.

New Zealand Mail, 21 February 1901, Page 16

PEN-NOTES AND PENCILLINGS.

The funeral of the Queen is described as having been really magnificent. “Bury the Great Duke,” wrote the poet, and the people remembered the deeds of Wellington by giving him a- funeral exceeding. any other in the nation's history. His/ however, was not nearly on the scale of Queen Victorians, which, according to all accounts was a pageant grand beyond the most extravagant imagining. Queen Victoria had not a grand coronation; indeed. compared with those :of the Georges, notably George IV.» it was quite paltry. The meagreness of the ceremony of 1838 was an evidence of the popular hatred of the preceding reigns, just as that of Saturday last was one demonstrating the popular esteem for a matchless' Sovereign, and veneration for her memory. The remains of the Queen were brought from Cowes to Portsmouth in the Royal YachtAlberta, and it is significant to reflect that the first gun to salute departing greatness was fired from a. warship bearing the name “Australia.” Last jewel to enrich the Crown. Australia in this way ytras the first to salute the passing ashes of her who gave it official being as a nation, “the young Queen to the old Queen,” symbolised in the name of one of cur British cruisers. Her, Majesty

loved the fleet, and loved the “handy man/’ who has done so much to make it, and /hence it is inspiring to picture the coffin borne on the shoulders of a naval 'detachment to its place on the awaiting gun-carriage. Down to the blue waters of the Solent, the splendid initial procession marched, the pipers playing a preliminary lament, and the bands following with one of the better known funeral marches. From Portsmouth to London the coffin was conveyed by train, •and it was drawn through the historic cit. 7by the Queen’s cream-coloured “conies.”

the Georges. The same journal is responsible for the assertion that cream horses have been used by all the sovereigns of the House of Brunswick with the exception of George 111., who refused to harness them as a protest against the action of Napoleon T. in adopting a similar- fashion. As a matter of fact, the Georges generally used white horses, and never cream, which first became the English Royal colour in 1837, when the then King of Hanover sent Queen Victoria a team from the Herrenhausen stud for her coronation. From that team her Majesty bred all the beautiful “creams” used by her in the sixty odd years of her reign, and at the present moment there are a large number of the animals at Hampton Court, where a “reserve” is kept in training in case of death or accident. The eight creams which happen to be in use" are kept at the Royal Mews, adjoining Buckingham Palace, where they are elaborately stabled, a groom being kept for each. They are beautiful creatures, with coats like {silk, exquisite wavy manes and tails, that fairly sweep the ground. Their State harness is as perfect. as themselves, and perhaps is even more valuable, being of red morocco, heavily gold-plated on a basis of copper.

The exact weight of it, to cover eight horses, iis eight hundredweight, or a hundredweight a horse. It may be of interest to mention that the Royal Mews contain over two hundred horses, and house nearly fifty carriages, one of the latter being the ornate creation in which her Majesty went to her coronation, in 1838. About one hundred persons are employed, their wages being on a scale commensurate with their duties, and when any employee becomes too old, or is incapitated through sickness or accident, he is provided for by a pension out of the Royal Purse.