His conductor saw the labour of Nigel's mind, and avoided increasing
it by farther conversation; so that, when he had explained to him
briefly the ceremonies observed at Court on such occasions of
presentation, the rest of their voyage was performed in silence.
They landed at Whitehall Stairs, and entered the Palace after
announcing their names,--the guards paying to Lord Glenvarloch the
respect and honours due to his rank.
The young man's heart beat high and thick within him as he came into
the royal apartments. His education abroad, conducted, as it had been,
on a narrow and limited scale, had given him but imperfect ideas of
the grandeur of a Court; and the philosophical reflections which
taught him to set ceremonial and exterior splendour at defiance,
proved, like other maxims of mere philosophy, ineffectual, at the
moment they were weighed against the impression naturally made on the
mind of an inexperienced youth, by the unusual magnificence of the
scene. The splendid apartments through which they passed,
the rich apparel of the grooms, guards, and domestics in waiting, and
the ceremonial attending their passage through the long suite of
apartments, had something in it, trifling and commonplace as it might
appear to practised courtiers, embarrassing, and even alarming, to
one, who went through these forms for the first time, and who was
doubtful what sort of reception was to accompany his first appearance
before his sovereign.
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