The dim reflection of a remembered splendor, a colorless and manifold diluted repetition of what they had beheld in proud old London⁠—we will not say at a royal coronation, but at a Lord Mayor’s show⁠—might be traced in the customs which our forefathers instituted, with reference to the annual installation of magistrates. The fathers and founders of the commonwealth⁠—the statesman, the priest, and the soldier⁠—deemed it a duty then to assume the outward state and majesty, which, in accordance with antique style, was looked upon as the proper garb of public or social eminence. All came forth, to move in procession before the people’s eye, and thus impart a needed dignity to the simple framework of a government so newly constructed.