This page has been validated.
THE MUMMY.
77

from being injured by her illness; and, by the time she was able to leave her bed, Lord Gustavus de Montfort, Lord Maysworth, and Dr. Hardman, with the Lords Noodle and Doodle, had declared themselves her adherents, bringing with them all the numerous host who, finding it too much trouble to judge for themselves, are always ready to follow in the train of a great man. The day when this important declaration was made, was that on which all the nobility of the realm assembled in that splendid monument of antiquity, Westminster Hall, to choose the council of state to govern the kingdom during the interregnum. This venerable pile, which had seen so many generations successively rise and pass away, now cleared of the incumbrances with which the bad taste of the middle ages had loaded it, shone in all its original magnificence, and opened wide its ponderous portals to receive the whole nobility of England upon this important occasion.

It was a glorious, and almost an awful sight, to see so many great and illustrious cha-