We carried him on Monday night down from his bed-chamber and laid him in the study.  There was a pane of glass let into the coffin-lid, so that the face might be kept in sight; and there it lay, among lilies of the valley, and framed in the wreath sent by Mr. Watts, the great painter, a wreath of the true Greek laurel, the victor’s crown, from the tree growing in his garden, cut only thrice before, for Tennyson and Leighton and Burne-Jones.  It would be too long to tell of all such tokens of affection and respect that were heaped upon the coffin,—­from the wreath of the Princess Louise down to the tributes of humble dependants,—­above a hundred and twenty-five, we counted; some of them the costliest money could buy, some valued no less for the feeling they expressed.  I am not sure that the most striking was not the village tailor’s, with this on its label—­“There was a man sent from God, and his name was John.”

On the Wednesday we made our sad procession to the church, through storm and flood.  The village was in mourning, and round the churchyard gates men, women, and children stood in throngs.  The coffin was carried in by eight of those who had been in his employ, and the church filled noiselessly with neighbours and friends, who after a hymn, and the Lord’s prayer, and a long silence, passed up the aisles for their last look, and to heap more offerings of wreaths and flowers around the bier.  At dusk tall candles were lit, and so through the winter’s night watch was kept.

Thursday, the 25th, brought together a great assembly, great for the remoteness of the place and the inclemency of the weather.  The country folk have a saying “Happy is the dead that the rain rains on;” and the fells were darkly clouded and the beck roared by, swollen to a torrent.  The church was far too small to hold the congregation, which included most of his personal friends and the representatives of many public bodies.  A crowd stood outside in the storm while the service went on.

It began with a hymn written for the occasion by Canon Rawnsley who with the Vicar of Hawkshead, Brantwood’s parish church, read the Psalms.  A hymn, “Comes at times a stillness as of even,” was sung by his friend Miss Wakefield; and the lesson read by Canon Richmond, arrived officially to represent the Bishop of Carlisle, but to most of us representing old times and the comradeships of his youth and early manhood.  The Vicar of Coniston and the Rev. Reginald Meister, on behalf of the Dean of Christ Church, also took part in the service.  When the Dead March sounded the coffin was covered with a pall given by the Ruskin Linen Industry of Keswick, lined with bright crimson silk, and embroidered with the motto, “Unto This Last,” and with his favourite wild roses showered over the gray field, just as they fall in the Primavera of Botticelli.  There was no black about his burying, except what we wore for our own sorrow; it was remembered how he hated black, so much that he would even have his mother’s coffin painted blue; and among the white and green and violet of the wreaths that filled the chancel, none was more significant in its sympathy than Mrs. Severn’s great cross of red roses.