The spectacle at the close was one most touching of all, for old King William, threescore and twelve, died at last in a gentle sleep, as he sat up on his couch, his hand resting, where it had lain undisturbed for hours, on the shoulder of the Queen. Such had been her office at various times, daily, for the preceding fortnight; and when it shall have been a little more hallowed by time, it will be a fitting subject to be limned by some future artist competent to treat it. Since the death of Charles II. no King of England had died under the same roof with his wife; and _then_ there was no such touching scene as the above, but only a few words of decent reconciliation before the royal pair parted for ever, and the wife (leaving the husband to die at leisure and commend worthless women to his brother’s protection) went to her chamber to receive the formal news of his death, and finally to receive the condolence of visitors, lying the while on a state bed of mourning, in a chamber lighted with tapers, the walls, floor, and ceiling covered with black cloth. Queen Adelaide stayed by _her_ husband to the last, then laid his unconscious head upon the pillow, and, quietly withdrawing to her chamber, looked for consolation to other sources than the visits of courtiers shaping their faces to the humour of the hour. The respect of the royal widow for the deceased King did not cease here. On Saturday night, the 8th of July, she attended the funeral ceremony, at Windsor, being present in the royal closet during the whole ceremony. She is the only Queen of England who saw a King, her consort, deposited in the tomb. In the following month the Dowager Queen left Windsor Castle, to which the shouts of a joyous people welcomed her successor. From that time she may be said to have commenced her own course of dying. Her story is really, henceforward, but the diary of an invalid. The nation, through the legislature, condoled with her upon her bereavement, and as she descended the steps of the throne to resume her old unostentatious privacy there was not a man in the realm who failed, in some wise, to greet her, or who did not acknowledge that she had borne greatness with honour, and had won the hearts of a people who had been once forward to censure her.