Nay, this is matter for the month of March,
When hares are maddest. Either speak in reason,
Giving cold argument the wall of passion,
Or I break up the court. --BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

It is by no means our purpose to detail minutely all the princely
festivities of Kenilworth, after the fashion of Master Robert Laneham,
whom we quoted in the conclusion of the last chapter. It is sufficient
to say that under discharge of the splendid fireworks, which we
have borrowed Laneham's eloquence to describe, the Queen entered the
base-court of Kenilworth, through Mortimer's Tower, and moving on
through pageants of heathen gods and heroes of antiquity, who offered
gifts and compliments on the bended knee, at length found her way to
the Great Hall of the Castle, gorgeously hung for her reception with the
richest silken tapestry, misty with perfumes, and sounding to strains
of soft and delicious music. From the highly-carved oaken roof hung
a superb chandelier of gilt bronze, formed like a spread eagle, whose
outstretched wings supported three male and three female figures,
grasping a pair of branches in each hand. The Hall was thus illuminated
by twenty-four torches of wax. At the upper end of the splendid
apartment was a state canopy, overshadowing a royal throne, and beside
it was a door, which opened to a long suite of apartments, decorated
with the utmost magnificence for the Queen and her ladies, whenever it
should be her pleasure to be private.