And she was not absent who had held the dead man in such high esteem, whom he had so loved and honoured. From two different points--as if she were reluctant to see the last of her old friend--from the balcony of Buckingham Palace, where the Royal Standard floated half-mast high, as the funeral passed up Constitution Hill, and again from the windows of St. James's Palace, as the melancholy train went down St. James's Street, the Queen, surrounded by her children and her young cousins from Belgium, looked down on the solemn pageant. Nearly twenty thousand privileged persons--many of them of high rank, filled St. Paul's, black-draped and gas-lit on the dark November day. After the funeral company were seated, the body, which had been received at the west entrance by the Bishop of London and the other clergy of the Cathedral, was carried up the nave to the chanting of "I am the Resurrection and the Life." The spurs were borne by one herald, the helmet and crest by another, the sword and target by a third, the surcoat by a fourth, the foreign batons by their foreign bearers, the English baton by Lord Anglesey. Among the psalms and anthems, a dirge accompanied by trumpets was sung, "And the King said to all the people that were with him, rend your clothes and gird you with sackcloth and mourn. And the King himself followed the bier. And they buried him; and the King lifted up his voice and wept at the grave, and all the people wept. And the King said unto his servants, Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel." An affecting incident occurred, when, at the conclusion of this dirge, the body was lowered into the crypt to the "intensely mournful" sound of "The Dead March in Saul." As the coffin with the coronet and baton slowly descended, and thus the great warrior departed from the sight of men, a sense of heavy depression came on the whole assembly. Prince Albert was deeply moved, and the aged Marquess of Anglesey, the octogenarian companion in arms of the deceased, by an irresistible impulse stepped forward, placed his hand on the sinking coffin that contained the remains of his chief in many battles, and burst into tears. "In the vast Cathedral leave him; God accept him, Christ receive him." CHAPTER XXIII. THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON III. AND THE EMPRESS EUGÉNIE--FIRE AT WINDSOR-- THE BIRTH OF PRINCE LEOPOLD. At the close of 1852 Mr. Disraeli announced his Budget in one famous speech, to which Mr. Gladstone replied in another, the first of those memorable speeches--at once a fine oration and a convincing argument-- so often heard since then. The Derby Ministry, already tottering to its fall on the ground of its opposition to Free-trade principles, was defeated, and the same night Lord Derby resigned office, and Lord Aberdeen, who was able to unite the Whigs and the followers of the late Sir Robert Peel, took his place.