The end soon came, and it was met with dignity. On the 22nd of November 1849, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited the Dowager Queen for the last time. On the last day of the month she calmly passed away. The above document was then produced, and it rendered kings-of-arms, heralds, gold sticks, and upholsterers powerless to exercise their absurd dignity in connection with death when so intelligible and sensible a protest as the above was in existence. Accordingly, on a fine December morning of 1849, there issued from the gates of Bentley Priory an ordinary hearse with a pall emblazoned with the Queen’s arms, preceded by three mourning coaches. A scanty escort of cavalry accompanied them, more for use than show, their office being to see that no obstruction impeded the funeral march from Stanmore to Windsor. On its way the attitude of the spectators exhibited more of sympathy than curiosity. The Harrow boys turned out in testimony of respect, and the country people at large _looked_ like mourners, wearing more or less, but wearing _some_, outward manifestation of sorrow. The Queen’s body reached the Chapel at Windsor at one o’clock. In the south aisle, close to the porch, there had been standing, grouped together, silent and motionless, a group of seamen,--grave, bronzed, athletic sailors. Their demeanour showed them worthy of the office which the now dead Queen had asked at their hands. When all the royal, and great, and noble personages were in their respective places--while some indispensable officials effected a little more of their foolish calling in the presence of death than Queen Adelaide herself would have sanctioned--while princes, peers, and prelates, ladies-in-waiting, clergy, and choristers, proceeded passively or actively with their parts in the ceremony of the day--then those ten sailors advanced to accomplish the duty assigned them, and, standing by the platform on which the body was placed, gently propelled it to a position over the subterranean passage into which it was lowered, after one of the simplest services that was ever said or sung for departed Queen had been accomplished--most simple, save when Garter stepped forward to announce, what all men knew, that it ‘had pleased Almighty God to take out of this life to His divine mercy’ the departed Queen; and to assert, what that royal lady would assuredly have gainsaid, that she was a ‘Most High, Most Mighty, and Most Excellent Princess.’ With this, and one or two other formalities of that pomp and state from which she had asked to be spared, Queen Adelaide passed to the tomb--a tomb capacious enough to contain whole generations of kings and queens, princes and princesses yet unborn.