The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-28 00:00:00

At Thackeray's Graveside,

Conspicuous among those who came side by side
with the hearse marched Thackeray's literary com-
peer, Dickens, erect and grave, and in his aspect
deflaut—tho defiance of the deep thought that had
fathomed all, and was ready to meet the end, come
when it might ; Cruikshank bearing his age bravely
but calmly, and seared to Death's inexorable rou-
tine; Millais, like a young Evangel, with placid all-
believing eyes ; the gentle Louis Blanc; the mem-
bers of the Punch staff with Mark Lemon at their
head, renewing his literary youth while the last
scene of all is closing upon his veteran associate—
Leech and Tenniel, whose magic skill Thackeray
admired and envied more than the highest art in all
the wide field of letters—many more of the young
and rising, whose name and fame are yet to come;
and with all these a great crowd of strangers who
had never known him save in spirit, and who saw
him now, for the first time and the last—" coffined
and cold."

When the coffin was brought forth, borne on the
shoulders of eight strong men, who staggered under
its weight, the strangers knew that he had been a
giant in body as well as in mind. Little more than
a week before many here had seen that massive
form in the London streets, towering above the
common crowd, and challenging the admiring eyes
of all who knew the fine grey head. And the whis-
per would pass from one to another, " There goes
Thackeray." And now again that whisper passes
among us, but in other phrase; for Thackeray is
going from our sight for ever. To the last solemn
words of the burial service the great coffin is lowered
into the vault, and ashes are cast upon ashes,
dust upon dust. The ceremony is cruelly short
and summary, as if the grave were impatient
and hungry for its prey. There remains
nothing for us now but to take a last look into the
vault. One by one the mourners come forward,
elbowing their way through the crowd. Among
the first to approach are two fair young ladies in
the deepest mourning. They stand side by side,
pale and motionless as statues, and look down with
a grief in their sad calm eyes which is past tears.
No one asks who they are, for all instinctively know
that they are those whom he loved best. Then come
other relatives and friends, and among them Alboni,
the great singer, grown so old and so sad and sorrow-
ful now. And one by one we pass along the side of
the grave, reverently uncovering our heads, and
and taking a last look through eyes dim with tears.
I could have been angry with that prosaic policeman
who stood at the grave's head and marshalled us,
as if we had been crushing to a show; but I thought
of him who lay there, and how at my funeral or
yours he would have marked that policeman for his
own, and made him immortal, "Now, don't be in
a hurry," said this intelligent officer ; " follow each
other to the right, and you will all see comfortably."
How Thackeray would have laughed if he could
have known that policeman would make a show of
him ! The policeman, therefore, did not vex me, as
he might have vexed others who did not think of
this.
And so Thackeray was buried on a bright Decem-
ber day ; and as I passed by the side of his grave
and looked down, the sunbeams were playing upon
the coffin-plate, making a halo of glory round his
name. And by-and-by, on returning to the spot
when the crowd had dispersed, I found the vault
covered with a great grey slab, and methought I
saw upon it the epitaph which he himself wrote—
" lieu I nunc sub fossa sunt tanti militia ossa."
—London Society.

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S CHRISTENING,—The very
christening of this little lady looks now like a
gorgeous
dance of Death. Nearly all the noblemen who
figured officially at it came to as violent an end as the baby's
mother; or wore otherwise gloomily distinguished. Essex,
who carried the basons, was the last of the earls of the line
of Bourchier. Exeter, who carried the wax, the first
marquis of the house of Courtenay, was beheaded. Dorset,
who bore the salt—the Grey who, like the king, repudiated
his first wife, Catharine Fitz-Alan, and, by King Henry's
niece, becamo the father of Lady Jane Grey—also passed
under the axe. Lord Rochford, a graceful rhymer and a
clever sonneteer; and Lord Hussey, who swelled the train,
tasted soon after of the scaffold and sawdust. Cranmer, the
young princess' godfather, came to a more painful end by
fire; while the Earl of Wiltshire, worse than submitting
to the headsman himself, saw his son undergo that bloody
submission ; and the Earl of Derby, the luckiest man of
this awfully splendid group, came off with no worse fortune
than having a daughter married to the Lord Stourton, who
was hanged !—Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne,
by the Duke of Manchester.