Since womankind existed, has any woman ever had such a greeting?  At ten hours’ distance, there is a city far more magnificent than ours.  With every respect for Kensington turnpike, I own that the Arc de l’Etoile at Paris is a much finer entrance to an imperial capital.  In our black, orderless, zigzag streets, we can show nothing to compare with the magnificent array of the Rue de Rivoli, that enormous regiment of stone stretching for five miles and presenting arms before the Tuileries.  Think of the late Fleet Prison and Waithman’s Obelisk, and of the Place de la Concorde and the Luxor Stone!  “The finest site in Europe,” as Trafalgar Square has been called by some obstinate British optimist, is disfigured by trophies, fountains, columns, and statues so puerile, disorderly, and hideous that a lover of the arts must hang the head of shame as he passes, to see our dear old queen city arraying herself so absurdly; but when all is said and done, we can show one or two of the greatest sights in the world.  I doubt if any Roman festival was as vast or striking as the Derby day, or if any Imperial triumph could show such a prodigious muster of faithful people as our young Princess saw on Saturday, when the nation turned out to greet her.  The calculators are squabbling about the numbers of hundreds of thousands, of millions, who came forth to see her and bid her welcome.  Imagine beacons flaming, rockets blazing, yards manned, ships and forts saluting with their thunder, every steamer and vessel, every town and village from Ramsgate to Gravesend, swarming with happy gratulation; young girls with flowers, scattering roses before her; staid citizens and aldermen pushing and squeezing and panting to make the speech, and bow the knee, and bid her welcome!  Who is this who is honored with such a prodigious triumph, and received with a welcome so astonishing?  A year ago we had never heard of her.  I think about her pedigree and family not a few of us are in the dark still, and I own, for my part, to be much puzzled by the allusions of newspaper genealogists and bards and skalds to Vikings, Berserkers, and so forth.  But it would be interesting to know how many hundreds of thousands of photographs of the fair bright face have by this time made it beloved and familiar in British homes.  Think of all the quiet country nooks from Land’s End to Caithness, where kind eyes have glanced at it.  The farmer brings it home from market; the curate from his visit to the Cathedral town; the rustic folk peer at it in the little village shop-window; the squire’s children gaze on it round the drawing-room table:  every eye that beholds it looks tenderly on its bright beauty and sweet artless grace, and young and old pray God bless her.  We have an elderly friend, (a certain Goody Twoshoes,) who inhabits, with many other old ladies, the Union House of the parish of St. Lazarus in Soho.  One of your cousins from this house went to see her, and found Goody and her companion crones all in a flutter of excitement about