"To fall asleep in slumber deep,
Slumber that knows no waking,"
part of a favourite chant of the Prince Consort's, both his sons hid their faces and wept. The Duke of Coburg wept incessantly for the comrade of his youth, the friend of his mature years.
Garter-King-at-Arms proclaimed the style and title of the deceased. When he referred to her Majesty with the usual prayer, "Whom God bless and preserve with long life, health, and happiness," for the first time in her reign the word "happiness" was omitted and that of "honour" substituted, and the full significance of the change went to the hearts of the listeners with a woeful reminder of what had come and gone. The Prince of Wales advanced first to take his last look into the vault, stood for a moment with clasped hands and burst into tears. In the end Prince Arthur was the more composed of the two fatherless brothers.
As the company retired, the "Dead March in Saul" was pealed forth.
The whole ceremony was modelled on the precedent of other royal funerals, but surely rarely was mourning so keen or sorrow so deep.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE FIRST MONTHS OF WIDOWHOOD—MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES, ETC., ETC.
The Princess of Hohenlohe arrived in England on the 20th of December,
and immediately joined the Queen at Osborne before the funeral of the
Prince. The old King of the Belgians came to Osborne on the 29th of
December—one can imagine his meeting with the widowed Queen.
On the 10th of January, 1862, occurred the terrible Hartley Colliery accident, by which upwards of two hundred miners perished. The Queen's grief for the Prince was not a month old when she telegraphed from Osborne her "tenderest sympathy for the poor widows and mothers."
The Prince of Wales left Osborne on the 6th of February in strict privacy to accomplish the tour in the East projected for him by his father. The Prince was accompanied by Dean Stanley, General Bruce, &c.