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.
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