sses of her people. There was not an
English journal that did not give it touching and noble utterance; and
the _Times_ took the lead in suggesting[305] that the only fit
resting-place for the remains of a man so dear to England was the Abbey
in which the most illustrious Englishmen are laid.

With the expression thus given to a general wish, the Dean of
Westminster lost no time in showing ready compliance; and on the morning
of the day when it appeared was in communication with the family and
representatives. The public homage of a burial in the Abbey had to be
reconciled with his own instructions to be privately buried without
previous announcement of time or place, and without monument or
memorial. He would himself have preferred to lie in the small graveyard
under Rochester Castle wall, or in the little churches of Cobham or
Shorne; but all these were found to be closed; and the desire of the
Dean and Chapter of Rochester to lay him in their Cathedral had been
entertained, when the Dean of Westminster's request, and the considerate
kindness of his generous assurance that there should be only such
ceremonial as would strictly obey all injunctions of privacy, made it a
grateful duty to accept that offer. The spot already had been chosen by
the Dean; and before mid-day on the following morning, Tuesday the 14th
of June, with knowledge of those only who took part in the burial, all
was done. The solemnity had not lost by the simplicity. Nothing so grand
or so touching could have accompanied it, as the stillness and the
silence of the vast Cathedral. Then, later in the day and all the
following day, came unbidden mourners in such crowds, that the Dean had
to request permission to keep open the grave until Thursday; but after
it was closed they did not cease to come, and "all day long," Doctor
Stanley wrote on the 17th, "there was a constant pressure to the spot,
and many flowers were strewn upon it by unknown hands, many tears shed
from unknown eyes." He alluded to this in the impressive funeral
discourse delivered by him in the Abbey on the morning of Sunday the
19th, pointing to the fresh flowers that then had been newly thrown (as
they still are thrown, in this fourth year after the death), and saying
that "the spot would thenceforward be a sacred one with both the New
World and the Old, as that of the representative of the literature, not
of this island only, but of all who speak our English tongue." The stone
placed