A General Thanksgiving for the Victory was proclaimed to take place on the 5th of December. The good Volunteers were duly marched to church, and one member of the Royal Family—the Duke of Cambridge—actually attended Divine Worship on the occasion. At Drury Lane Theatre, “the Interlude of _The Victory and Death of Lord Nelson_ seemed to affect the audience exceedingly; but the tear of sensibility was wiped away by the merry eccentricities of _The Weathercock_”—the moral to be learned from which seems to be, that the good folks of the early century seemed to think that God should not be thanked, nor heroes mourned, too much. This must close this year, for Nelson’s funeral belongs to the next. After the Battle of Trafalgar, the Patriotic Fund was again revived, and over £50,000 subscribed by the end of the year. Consols were remarkably even during this year, varying very little even at the news of Trafalgar: January, 61⅞; December, 65. The quartern loaf varied from January 1s. 4¼d., to December 1s. 0¼d. Wheat varied from 95s. to 90s. per quarter. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XIII. 1806. Nelson’s funeral—Epigrams—Death of Pitt—His funeral—General Fast—Large coinage of copper—Impeachment of Lord Melville—The Abolition of the Slave Trade passes the House of Commons—Death and funeral of Fox—His warning Napoleon of a plot against him—Negotiations for peace—Napoleon declares England blockaded. THE YEAR opens with the Funeral of Nelson, whose Victory at Trafalgar had made England Mistress of the Ocean. He was laid to his rest in St Paul’s on January 9th, much to the profit of the four vergers of that Cathedral, who are said to have made more than £1000, by the daily admission of the throngs desirous of witnessing the preparations for the funeral. The _Annual Register_ says, “The door money is taken as at a puppet show, and amounted for several days to more than forty pounds a day.” Seats to view the procession, from the windows of the houses on the route, commanded any price, from One Guinea each; and as much as Five Hundred Guineas is said to have been paid for a house on Ludgate Hill.[23] Enthusiasm was at its height, as it was in later times, within the memory of many of us, when the Duke of Wellington came to rest under the same roof as the Gallant Nelson. His famous signal—which, even now, thrills the heart of every Englishman—was prostituted to serve trade Advertisements, _vide_ the following: “ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY MAN TO DO HIS DUTY. NELSON’S VICTORY, or TWELFTH DAY. To commemorate that great National Event, which is the pride of every Englishman to hand down to the latest posterity, as well as to contribute towards alleviating the sufferings of our brave wounded Tars, &c., H. WEBB, Confectioner, Little Newport Street, will, on that day, Cut for SALE, the LARGEST RICH TWELFTH CAKE ever made, weighing near 600 lbs., part of the profits of which H. W. intends applying to the Patriotic Fund at Lloyd’s.”[24]