First came the music. It comprised a variety of
instruments, perhaps imperfectly adapted to one another, and
played with no great skill; but yet attaining the great object
for which the harmony of drum and clarion addresses itself to
the multitude--that of imparting a higher and more heroic air to
the scene of life that passes before the eye. Little Pearl at
first clapped her hands, but then lost for an instant the
restless agitation that had kept her in a continual
effervescence throughout the morning; she gazed silently, and
seemed to be borne upward like a floating sea-bird on the long
heaves and swells of sound. But she was brought back to her
former mood by the shimmer of the sunshine on the weapons and
bright armour of the military company, which followed after the
music, and formed the honorary escort of the procession. This
body of soldiery--which still sustains a corporate existence,
and marches down from past ages with an ancient and honourable
fame--was composed of no mercenary materials. Its ranks were
filled with gentlemen who felt the stirrings of martial impulse,
and sought to establish a kind of College of Arms, where, as in
an association of Knights Templars, they might learn the
science, and, so far as peaceful exercise would teach them, the
practices of war.
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