CHAPTER VII. AND LAST.

Funeral in Westminster Abbey-In Memoriam' sketches from the pens of old friends: Sir Bartle Frere-Sir Vincent Eyre-Sir Joseph Fayrer— Sir George Clerk, and others-Conclusion.

'A RESTING-PLACE in the sanctuary which is the most ancient, venerable, and most honoured in the land--a gathering of men illustrious by rank, station, and service, around his grave-the spontaneous assemblage of a great and sympathetic crowd in the cathedral and its precincts, proved yesterday how much of respect and admiration James Outram had won in distant climes from his countrymen.' In these words did our leading journal open a sympathetic and graphic account of the funeral of a hero, to whose remains no man could grudge the honour awarded by this national ceremony. It was fit that the seal of public approval should have thus been openly set upon the last page of an exceptionally noble record, one which needed not the aid of conventional biography to extract its moral, or expound its meaning, so patent that he who runs may read.' We will not here repeat the detailed particulars of an occasion which was ably chronicled and commented on in the columns of the daily and weekly press; the illustrations of skilful draughtsmen being in some instances added to the word-painting of descriptive writers. Those only who have assisted at similar ceremonies in that grand and truly English Abbey-the brightest architectural jewel of the nation—can fully realise the effect produced within its majestic walls on March 25, 1863, by a combination of so many of the elements

1863

THE FUNERAL IN THE ABBEY.

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that raise emotion. We are told, and can readily understand, that the reading of the service was impressive, the music exquisitely performed, and that the assemblage of spectators represented the aristocracy of birth, of valour, and of worth; 1 but such were not the causes which stirred brave hearts to their depths that day. There lay all that was left to them of as true and loyal a nature as they had ever known-there lay not only a statesman, a warrior, a nation's loss, but a comrade, a leader, above all, a friend. There were in the train following his coffin some who haply remembered the day when, in the heat and fire of Lucknow, he dismounted from his horse to protect a poor native lad whose parents had been slain, and who sat weeping by the roadside. Haply it was the memory of a personal kindness which, at the words earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,' made a 'stout Highlander, who had doubtless faced death for many a weary night in the Alam Bágh,' wipe with his cuff the tears that flowed down his cheek.'

The Highlanders at Outram's funeral were volunteers. Four officers - Lieutenant-Colonel Lockhart, Captain Thomson, Lieutenant Browne, and Quartermaster Skrine-with Sergeant-Major Pocock and nineteen other non-commissioned officers-came up from Shorncliffe to pay on behalf of their regiment, the last honours to one by whom it was their

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1 Besides Prince Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein, the Duke of Argyll, the Earls of Dalhousie and Shaftesbury, Lords Chelmsford, Lyveden, and Harris, Sir John McNeill, and many well-known and eminent noblemen and statesmen, there were present, from among Outram's brother-campaigners, Lords Clyde and Keane, Sir Edward Lugard, and Sir Henry Havelock; and, from among his brother-administrators, such men as Sir George Russell Clerk, Sir John Lawrence, and Sir Henry Rawlinson. Of his personal friends, whether of England or India, so great was the concourse, that it were invidious to select the more familiar or remarkable names. It was remarked of Lord Clyde on that day, as he stood at the head of the grave, that his countenance had a melancholy and meditative-almost, if not quite, tearful look. The distinguished soldier died just five months afterwards, on August 14 of the same year.

privilege to have been led to battle and to conquest.' Sir John Kaye who, had he lived, would himself have painted Outram's entire career with all his literary experience and practised skill, tells these particulars regarding the presence in the Abbey of the kilted soldiers :

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The 78th Highlanders knew Outram well. There were some men still in the regiment who, twenty years before, had served in the dreary furnace of Scinde; but it was on the great battle-field of Oude that they had learnt to love and to honour a leader who was ever as mindful of their interests as he was regardless of his own: who was as tender towards, and as careful of, his men as though they were his children; who never sacrificed a life except to the stern necessity of the fight. On the morning of March 25, these gallant fellows stood at the door of the mansion which held the remains of their beloved general, and earnestly sought to be allowed to carry the body to its last resting-place. Most reluctantly was the request refused; but they marched beside the hearse, and filed through the Abbey beside the coffin, and were beside it when it was lowered into the grave. And as they stood there, their thoughts went back to the Alam Bagh, with tender memories and sorrowful regrets that such a chief was lost to them for ever. Not merely of the more stirring events of the memorable campaign thought they in that solemn hour; not merely of his forwardness in action, of the enthusiasm which sent him ever where danger was the thickest, and of the glories to which he had led them. They thought also of his kindness, of the love which he had shown them, of his unceasing efforts to administer to their comforts, and to mitigate the rigours of war. They remembered the much he had done, the more he had striven

The extreme weight of the leaden coffin, and the distance to be traversed, rendered the arrangement impossible without risk of retarding the arrival of the funeral procession at the Abbey.