The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-01-18 00:00:00

The Correspondent a the Standard also wiites

The walls of the picture-gallery, thus turned Into a
mortuary chamber were draped in solemn black, relieved
alone here and there by the letter N boldly embroidered is
silver silk and surmounted by an Imperial crown intim same
material. The coffins were half hidden by bouquet. of ex-
quisite flowers, such As not may eutiservatories could
lurnish at this time of the year but even more pro-
minent than the white camellias and delicate stephanotis
And fragrant jasimine bordered by feathery !reit Is of
maidenhair fern were the violets which this mild season hat
produced under nearly ever, Kentish hedge—violets In
wreaths here, in crosses there, in such numbers as made the
mo-t unobservant ask what was their meaning Few, per-
haps, knew that this little flower is one of the embleme of
the Bonaparte family, or recollected that Byron, in Napo-
!eon's Farewell' thus calls upon France to remember
her great chieftain

" Die violet still grows In the depth of thy valleys ;
Though wlther'd, thy tear will unfold It again. '
A large cross of whim cassieldise, bordered wit't violets,
resting at the loot of the coffin, was rent as a tribute of
respect by, air, Scott. of Sundridge Park, and all day lens
symgitlibere, as they obtained adiniasion to the grounds,
brought flowers of price or bunches f violets, or huge
circles of iminortelles, hearing the name and titles of the
deoeased. Os either side of the coffin w.•re three linueuse
silver candlesticks holding funeral tam rs of unnleached
war, • veld& throw a bellow radiance over the scene.
Beyond thope tapers were on ouch elde three gentlemen
In evening dress, acting as guardians of the h xly, and
they were relieved at every hour by other Volunteer., la the
moot the chamber .oluotisaes one, oftener twt, /Preach priest,
knultrin ah g em, privet, jug( es the Rom os Roman Citholi, ap-
puma no amid( numhet Etinsisitoes, gamed the foot of
the cn e they geoid! tried' •nd oilseed petition ft the
repose ottlie ImperoVe swab- His body, tin %nosier. of
all eyes, lay .calmly in She midst of the solemn splendour,
clad in the hjeteric
.tutiform of • general of diction.
From the right "haulier over the breast lay the-
crimson ribbon of the Grand Gordon of the Legion
of Honour, while . the military nu dole rested on the
left breast, andAlsevibbon, apt:eland George of the Garter inf..
• parole vsiveLpall retilok. y covered the lower halt of
thipboily. Still, curloully em and the tiXly look, and the
face w,t yet more pinched than the dy before. although in
it. eitpreatloo entirely painless. Those who looked upon the
sight will sever larva the plecid *marmite of the c"rib
mending consitoriases, which its death bore a much stronger
resemblance to the later portraits of the first Emperor,
especially to the St Flelems deo h-cast, than it had ever done
he ore Thie resemblance would have 'cell even nave 'tisk-
Mr but tor the monstaehe sad leeporial, that elm at hid the
lips. . . . . .

Ab at one o'clock the pressure at the principal gates be-
came very serious, and there could not have been at that
time fewer than 25 000 to 28 000 people waiting their tutu of
admisaion—a f..uctla of this number being puke I like
herrings in a Imre' close in front of the gates. IV ght in
front of the Ironwork sat Mr. Superintendent Gerapa on •
wonderfully g 10,1 tempered horse, which iu spite .4 the
heaving mob remained perfecly quiescent except when he
wee barked by the 'treason to the Ironwork, which bent and
quivered under. Os strain, so that the post of greatest
danger seemed really to be after all just inside rather than
without, and as the time wore on and despair of accomplish-
ing their purpose intensified the anxiety of the bulk of the
crowd to obt tin admission, it appeared that nothing tool
save the throng from rushing on crushing to certain
death.. ,

. .
To have opened the gates would have been either to have
had the house token by storm or to have had a score of
people killed or maimed for life in the such nitre was
nothiug for it but to continue letting the foremost
filter in in batches, and to take the risk of crushing
the next rank as the gate was at4ain forced to. Painful,
however, as was the scene, it was not with at its
mimic Incidents. A woman deliberately climbed the
outside of the centre gate, in spite of the remora-
strainer of the crowd without and the police and
erivilezed persons within, and when she had got Mr feet
mire than hale way up she at first calmly, then indignantly,
awl finally reproachfully demanded to be assisted by them
In authority over the four-Inch gilt silk-c, whi reupon to an
absolute oertalnty she would have base impaled . . One
in had her forearm wrenched out of joint at the elbow;
mice her, Intl younger, was fearfully brussod almet he body ;
a woman of 55 had her area broken, and several other
oases of broken limbs are reported ; bit the meet serious
case as it seemed at the time, was that of a small woman,
well advanoed in yore, who was positively carried
tfirofigh the gate with the elbows of two men driven into her
neck, • of was celeste e ith difficult y pan expert poliieman
as ',to reeled ti fall. Wall half a 11,irat mere i the same
eatery alas would have Leon taken to Lee Mime last night •
oorpse. As It an, she was sverioasly, it may be perruanently,
lel:tree. To tell the hornets tern off veterans heads, the
ginives drpped, the nape °reefed from the dresses, the inu--
beetles sod pia-awls smashed, and the stints t en off or
jailets ruined, wt nil he to waste space over a convene
tine trifle, bat we do hope that on any similar oceseisnl
in England the police ss ill refuse to accept the duty impierd
upon that nrAetril str •I 4 barriers are provi led to break il.e
pressure of the cross.. As it was, the results would have
been dreadful if there had not always happstied, at the
moments of the worst crushing, to be some soldiers from
Woolwich among the throng, and they, seconding the efforts
of the police, were able to hold the more unruly spirits in
some tort of control.