lie would fain have induced me to enter the Establishment, but though he did not succeed in that respect, he ever treated me with a brotherly regard, which I sincerely reciprocated. Before he embarked for his distant field of labour he wrote a farewell note in which he said: “On the few points in which we differ, I thank God we have been enabled to dwell, often at some length, without one particle of that acrimony which often discredits controversy, and proves it to proceed rather from human passions than from zeal for the truth of God. I cannot recollect, throughout all our intercourse, one single word which can be considered as a breach of charity between us. For this I am especially thankful, that when I go to offer up my gift upon far distant altars, I shall have left no brother at home, with whom I ought first to have been reconciled.”
I had a ticket for St. George’s Chapel when William IV. was interred. The interior of the building was dark, except as illumined by torches in the hands of soldiers who lined the nave, and by numerous lights within the choir. When the procession drew up about nine o’clock, at the south entrance, the blaze of outside torches was seen through the stained windows; then the appearance of heralds in their tabards followed: next the slow march of mourners close to the coffin, the Duke of Sussex being most conspicuous; afterwards a funeral dirge echoed from the fretted roof. The silence was further broken by the Burial Service and the repetition of royal titles. “Sic transit gloria mundi” came last, and left an ineffaceable impression.
I was further favoured with a ticket to see the coronation in Westminster Abbey. When the procession entered the nave, officers of state and foreign ambassadors appeared in rich costume. Diamond-decked coats and rich mantles made a grand show, yet they chiefly served to set off the simple dignity of the queen in her early girlhood, whilst a spell of loyalty touched spectators looking down from lofty galleries. The coronation shout of “God save the Queen” needed to be heard that it might be fully understood. Afterwards, a stream of dignified personages, with mantles and coronets, issued from the choir and covered the nave with a tesselated pattern of rich colours.