A HERO'S FAREWELL

"The sun shone down from a pale blue January sky on a scene that was to have no parallel for close on a hundred years. Not until the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, in fact, was the metropolis again to behold anything comparable to the funeral of Lord Nelson.

"The procession was headed by 10,000 regular troops led by Sir David Dundas. They were followed by several hundred mourning carriages in which rode the Princes of the Blood and many of the first men in the realm. More than thirty admirals and a hundred Captains attended the greatest naval commander in history to his last resting-place. At Temple Bar they were joined by the Lord Mayor and his train, who took their place after the Prince of Wales. The procession was so long that the Scots Greys who marched at the head of it were entering the cathedral before the officeRs of the Navy and Army who brought up the rear had even left the Admiralty. To the sorrowful strains of the 'Dead March in Saul' played on the fifes and muffled drums, it moved forward at a slow and solemn pace. The entire procession took more than three and a half hours to pass.

"The windows and balconies along the route were black with spectators, and every inch of standing room on the pavements was filled. For days people had been flocking in from the country to witness Nelson's funeral. 'Town was never so full.' The behavior of this vast concourse of onlookers of all ranks was surprisingly quiet and orderly. It was said that a greater degree of decorum was observed than was ever before noticed in so great a multitude.

"The most interesting part of the cavalcade, however, and that which seemed to make the strongest impression on the crowd, was the company of four dozen seamen from the Victory who marched ahead of the carriages bearing the two shot-scarred Union Jacks and the St. George's ensign belonging to the flagship. The sight of these sturdy, weather-beaten tars in their well-loved uniform made a stronger appeal to the sympathies of the onlookers than all the pomp and pageantry of the procession.

"It was not only the common people who thought this way. 'It was magnificent,' related Mrs. Codrington, who, as one of the 'Wives of Trafalgar', was privileged to witness the funeral service in the cathedral; 'it was solemn and impressive to the last degree,' yet, as she had to admit, 'the part that spoke to my heart most powerfully (and that I must acknowledge did touch me deeply) was when the sailors of the Victory brought in Nelson's colors; and this I attribute to its being the only thing that was Nelson - the rest was so much the Herald's Office.' "

G.J. Marcus, The Age of Nelson