It was a great inspiration for Anthony. He had seen world-powers
incarnate below him in the glittering rustling figure of the Queen, and
the dark-eyed courtly Ambassador in his orders and jewels at her side.
There they had sat together in one carriage; the huge fiery realm of the
south, whose very name was redolent with passion and adventure and
boundless wealth; and the little self-contained northern kingdom, now
beginning to stretch its hands, and quiver all along its tingling sinews
and veins with fresh adolescent life. And Anthony knew that he was one of
the cells of this young organism; and that in him as well as in Elizabeth
and this sparkling creature at his side ran the fresh red blood of
England. They were all one in the possession of a common life; and his
heart burned as he thought of it.
After he had parted from Mary he rode back to Westminster, and crossed
the river by the horse-ferry that plied there. And even as he landed and
got his beast, with a deal of stamping and blowing, off the echoing
boards on to the clean gravel again, there came down the reaches of the
river the mellow sound of music across a mile of water, mingled with the
deep rattle of oars, and sparkles of steel and colour glittered from the
far-away royal barges in the autumn sunshine; and the lad thought with
wonder how the two great powers so savagely at war upon the salt sea,
were at peace here, sitting side by side on silken cushions and listening
to the same trumpets of peace upon the flowing river.
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