When the cairn ("seven or eight feet high") was all but finished, Prince Albert climbed to the top and deposited the last stone, when three cheers were given. The Queen calls it "a gay, pretty, and touching sight," that almost made her cry. "The view was so beautiful over the dear hills; the day so fine, the whole so _gemüthlich_." She ends reverently, "May God bless this place, and allow us to see it and enjoy it many a long year." CHAPTER XXII. THE IRON DUKE'S FUNERAL. On the 11th of November the Parliament met and voted the Duke a public funeral in the City cathedral of St. Paul's, by the side of Nelson, the great soldier and the great sailor bearing each other company in their resting-place, in the middle of the people whom they had saved from foreign dominion. The hearse with the body had left Walmer at seven o'clock on the morning of the 10th, minute guns being fired in succession from the castles of Walmer, Deal, and Sandown, startling the sea-mews hovering over the Goodwin Sands, causing the sailors in the foreign vessels in the Downs to ask if England had gone to war. From the railway station in London, the coffin was escorted by Life Guards to Chelsea, where it was received by the Lord Chamberlain and conducted to the great hall for the lying-in-state, which occupied four days. The fine old hospital, where so many of the Duke's soldiers had found refuge, which Wilkie had painted for him at the moment when the pensioners were listening to the reading of the Gazette that announced the victory of Waterloo, was carefully prepared for the last scene but one of a hero's life. Corridors, vestibule, and hall were hung with black cloth and velvet, and lit with tall candles in silver candelabra. Trophies of tattered banners, the spoils of the many victories of him who had just yielded to the last conqueror, were surmounted by the royal standard; Grenadiers lined hall and vestibule, their heads bent over their reversed arms. A plumed canopy of black velvet and silver was raised over a dais, with a carpet of cloth of gold, on which rested the gilt and crimson coffin. At the foot of the bier hung the mace and insignia of the late Duke's numerous orders of knighthood; and on ten pedestals, with golden lions in front, were the eight field-marshals' batons of eight different kingdoms, which had been bestowed on him. On the ninth and tenth pedestals were placed the Great Banner and the banner of Wellesley. The Queen and Prince Albert came privately with their children, early on the first day, a windy, rainy Saturday in November, to view the lying-in-state. On the night before the funeral the coffin was removed to the Horse Guards, over which Wellington had so long presided, where it is said that in the early days of his career he met Nelson. Early next morning the coffin was conveyed to a pavilion on the parade, whence it was lifted to the car which was to convey it to St. Paul's.