On the eighteenth of November, 1852, the great Duke of Wellington was buried. Of course many boys, myself among the number, had leave to go up to London to see the funeral procession. It had been a very rainy autumn and the Thames was swollen to an inordinate degree. Eton was flooded and we were taken up part of the High Street in punts. I believe that no such flood has been seen since, though the year 1894, when the boys were sent home on the seventeenth of November, fell not far short of it. I witnessed the funeral from the first floor of the Bath Hotel, which stood at the corner of Arlington Street and Piccadilly, at the north-eastern corner of the modern Ritz Hotel. I have since seen many great ceremonies, many magnificent and moving spectacles in many lands, but none that could be named in the same day with the funeral of the Iron Duke. As a military display it was, of course, superb. All arms were represented, and a brave show they made; uniforms were far more gorgeous in those days than they are now that the spirit of economy has cut off epaulettes and gold lace from officers, shabracks and other ornaments from their horses. The bands of the various regiments, the muffled roll of the kettle-drums, mysterious in the distance, heralding the dirge of the “Dead March in Saul,” followed by the wailing of the bagpipes of the Highland regiments; the solemnity of the reversed arms, the charger with empty boots—always a pathetic sight at a soldier’s funeral—led behind the great bronze car, hung with wreaths of cypress and bay, drawn by twelve black horses, three abreast, housed with black velvet and a blaze of heraldry; the deputations of splendidly clad foreign officers, following the car. All this appealed to the imagination of the huge crowd, often moving them to tears, for they knew full well that “a Prince and a great man was dead in Israel.” Few there were, even among the poorest, who had not managed to don some slight sign of mourning, the slighter the more touching, for it meant the more: a scrap of crape, a bit of black cloth worn as an armlet were but the tokens of the real mourning which was in men’s hearts. He was such a familiar sight to Londoners, this wonderful old hero whom they used to watch riding along Constitution Hill to and from the Horse Guards—to and from duty—to the last a spare, lithe, active figure, smart as a young boy, dressed with scrupulous neatness, and even a tinge of dandyism, in a tight-fitting, single breasted blue frock coat, with spotless white trousers. When he passed all men doffed their hats as if he had been a king, and the answering salute of the forefinger raised to the brim of his hat, never omitted, never varying, became almost historic. Often I saw him: he was a very old man, and the neck was a little bent, but the chiselled face was still commanding, and the fire had not ceased to glow in those eagle eyes, the _finestra dell’ anima_—altogether an unforgettable figure.