balconies, guards, and processions, made Palace-yard the liveliest spectacle in the world — the hall was the most glorious.  The blaze of lights, the richness and variety of habits, the ceremonial, the benches of peers, and peeresses, frequent and full, was as awful as a pageant can be -. and yet for the King’s sake and my own, I never wish to see another; nor am impatient to have my Lord Effingham’s promise fulfilled.  The King complained that so few precedents were kept for their proceedings.  Lord Effingham owned, the earl marshal’s office had been strangely neglected; but he had taken such care for the future, that the next coronation would be regulated in the most exact manner imaginable.  The number of peers and peeresses present was not very great; some of the latter, with no excuse in the world, appeared in Lord Lincoln’s gallery, and even walked about the hall indecently in the intervals of the procession.  My Lady Harrington, covered with all the diamonds she could borrow, hire, or seize, and with the air of Roxann, was the finest figure at a distance; she complained to George Selwyn that she was to walk with Lady Portsmouth, who would have a wig and a stick—­“Pho,” said he, “you will only look as if you were taken up by the constable.”  She told this everywhere, thinking the reflection was on my Lady Portsmouth.  Lady Pembroke, alone at the head of the countesses, was the picture of majestic modesty; the Duchess of Richmond as pretty as nature and dress, with no pains of her own, could make her; Lady Spencer, Lady Sutherland, and Lady Northampton, very pretty figures.  Lady Kildare, still beauty itself, if not a little too large.  The ancient peeresses were by no means the worst party:  Lady Westmoreland, still handsome, and with more dignity than all; the Duchess of Queensbury looked well, though her locks were milk-white; Lady Albemarle very genteel; nay, the middle age had some good representatives in lady Holderness, Lady Rochford, and Lady Strafford, the perfectest little figure of all.  My Lady Suffolk ordered her robes, and I dressed part of her head, as I made some of my Lord Hertford’s dress; for you know, no profession comes amiss to me, from a tribune of the people to a habit-maker.  Don’t imagine that there were not figures as excellent on the other side:  old Exeter, who told the King he was the handsomest man she ever saw; old Effingham and a Lady Say and Seale, with her hair powdered and her tresses black, were in excellent contrast to the handsome.  Lord B * * * * put on rouge upon his wife and the Duchess of Bedford in the painted chamber; the Duchess of Queensbury told me of the latter, that she looked like an orange-peach, half red, and half yellow.  The coronets of the peers and their robes disguised them strangely; it required all the beauty of the Dukes of Richmond and Marlborough to make them noticed.  One there was, though of another species, the noblest figure I ever saw, the high-constable of Scotland,