In the meantime there was the old King to bury, and he was consigned to the tomb with a ceremony which has been graphically pictured by Horace Walpole. He describes himself as attending the funeral, not as a mourner, but as ‘a rag of quality,’ in which character he walked, as affording him the best means of seeing the show. He pronounced it a noble sight, and he appears to have enjoyed it extremely. ‘The Prince’s chamber, hung with purple, and a quantity of silver lamps, the coffin under a canopy of purple velvet, and six vast chandeliers of silver, on high stands, had a very good effect. The procession, through a line of foot-guards, every seventh man bearing a torch--the horse-guards lining the outsides--their officers, with drawn sabres and crape sashes, on horseback--the drums muffled--the fifes--bells tolling--and minute guns--all this was very solemn.’ There was, however, something more exquisite still in the estimation of this very unsentimental rag of quality. ‘The _charm_,’ he says, ‘the charm was the entrance to the Abbey, where we were received by the dean and chapter in rich robes, the choir and almoners bearing torches; the whole Abbey so illuminated that one saw it to greater advantage than by day; the tombs, long aisles, and fretted roof all appearing distinctly, and with the happiest _chiaro oscuro_. There wanted nothing but incense and little chapels here and there, with priests saying mass for the repose of the defunct; yet one could not complain of its not being Catholic enough. I had been in dread of being coupled with some boy of ten years old; but the heralds were not very accurate, and I walked with George Grenville, taller and older, to keep me in countenance. When we came to the chapel of Henry VII. all solemnity and decorum ceased; no order was observed, people sat or stood where they could or would; the yeomen of the guard were crying out for help, oppressed by the immense weight of the coffin; the bishop read sadly, and blundered in the prayers. The fine chapter, _Man that is born of a woman_, was chanted, not read; and the anthem, besides being immeasurably tedious, would have served as well for a nuptial. The real serious part was the figure of the Duke of Cumberland, heightened by a thousand melancholy circumstances. He had a dark-brown adonis, with a cloak of black cloth, and a train of five yards. Attending the funeral of a father _could not be pleasant_; his leg extremely bad, yet forced to stand upon it near two hours; his face bloated and disturbed with his late paralytic stroke, which has affected, too, one of his eyes; and placed over the mouth of the vault, into which, in all probability, he must himself soon descend; think how unpleasant a situation. He bore it all with a firm and unaffected countenance. This grave scene was fully contrasted by the burlesque Duke of Newcastle. He fell into a fit of crying the moment he came into the chapel, and flung himself back into a stall, the archbishop