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All the previous night the coffin had lain in the little chapel of St. Faith between the South Transept—wherein is the Poet’s Corner where Irving was to be laid—and the Chapter House, where the mourners were to assemble. The funeral had been arranged for noon, but hours before that time every approach to the Abbey was thronged with silent crowds. There was a hush in the air through which the roar of the traffic in the streets seemed to come modified, as though it had been intercepted by that belt of silence. Slowly, imperceptibly, like shadows in their silence, the crowds gathered; a sombre mass closing as if with a black ring the whole precincts of the Cathedral.

Noon found the interior of the edifice a solid mass of people, save where the passage-way up the Nave and Choir was marked with masses of white flowers. Wreaths and crosses and bunches of flowers must have been sent in hundreds—thousands, for in addition to those within, both sides of the Cloister walks were banked with them.

Who could adequately describe that passing from the Chapter House, whence the funeral procession took its way through the South and West Cloister Walk, down the South Aisle and up the Nave and Choir till the coffin was rested before the Sanctuary; the touching music, in which now and again the sweet childish treble—the purest sound on earth—seemed to rend the mourners’ very hearts; the mighty crowd, silent, with bowed heads; everywhere white faces with eyes that wept.

Oh that crowd! Never in the world was greater tribute to any man. The silence! The majestic silence, for it transcended negation and became positive from its dormant force. “Not dead silence, but living silence!” as the dead man’s old companion, Sir Edward Russell, said in words that should become immortal. All thoughts of self were forgotten; the lesser feelings of life seemed to have passed away in that glory of triumphant sorrow. Eye and heart and brain and memory went with the Dead as to the solemn music the mournful procession passed along. Surely a lifetime of devotion must have gone to the crowning of those long-drawn seconds. To one moving through that divine alley-way of sympathetic sorrow it seemed as though the serried ranks on either hand, seen in the dimness of that October day, went back and back to the very bounds of the thinking world.

As from the steps of the Sanctuary came the first words of the Service for the Burial of the Dead, a bright gleam of winter sunshine burst through the storied window of the South Transept and lit up the laurel pall till it glistened like gold.

And then for a little while few could see anything except dimly through their tears.

When the last words of the Benediction had been spoken over his grave, there came from the Organ-loft the first solemn notes of Handel’s noble Dead March. The great organ had been supplemented by military instruments, and as the mournful notes of the trumpets rose they seemed to cling to the arches and dim corners of the great Cathedral, tearing open our hearts with endless echoes. And then the solemn booming of the muffled drums seemed to recall us to the life that has to be lived on, howsoever lonely or desolate it may be.

“The song of woe

Is after all an earthly song.”

The trumpets summon us, and the drums beat the time of the onward march—quick or slow as Duty calls.

March! March!