The long procession was closed by the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the realm, by the great dignitaries, and by the brothers and sons of the King.  Last of all came the Prince of Wales, conspicuous by his fine person and noble bearing.  The grey old walls were hung with scarlet.  The long galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears or the emulation of an orator.  There were gathered together, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art.  There were seated round the Queen the fair-haired young daughters of the House of Brunswick.  There the Ambassadors of great Kings and Commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other country in the world could present.  There Siddons, in the prime of her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all the imitations of the stage.  There the historian of the Roman Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres, and when, before a senate which still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa.  There were seen, side by side, the greatest painter and the greatest scholar of the age.  The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us the thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons.  It had induced Parr to suspend his labours in that dark and profound mine from which he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition, a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splendid.  There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of the throne had in secret plighted his faith.  There too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from the common decay.  There were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised, and exchanged repartees, under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montague.  And there the ladies whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster election against palace and treasury, shone round Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

“The Serjeants made proclamation.  Hastings advanced to the bar, and bent his knee.  The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that great presence.  He had ruled an extensive and populous country, had made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and pulled down princes.  And in his high place he had so borne himself, that all had feared him, that most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory, except virtue.  He looked like a great man, and not like a bad man.  A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage which, while it indicated deference to the court, indicated