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Despite such criticisms and warnings, the monarchy pursues its course virtually unchallenged. One reason for the lack of a serious political challenge may be that the monarchy is not now identified with a rich, powerful, and coherent aristocracy, as it was a century ago, but with the ordinary citizen. Then, too, there are many who look to the royal family as an example.

Long ago a compositor in a London newspaper, a good union man and a Socialist, explained this attitude. "I'd rather have my two daughters reading about the Queen and all that stuff than reading those magazines about the flicks. Who'd you want your daughter to follow, Lana Turner or the Queen?"

So we return again to the indefinable and powerful tie that binds people and Crown.

Perhaps it is a sense of historical identity experienced as the Queen rides past, carrying with her the atmosphere of other Englands. Here before the eyes of her people is a reassurance of survival, an example of continuity. This is one of those periods in history when the British need reassuring.