'A week ago we did not know for certain whether the great funeral would be at Hawarden or in. London; and if in the bey, there was no definite notion as to the time—whether in ten days, or three weeks, or even five or six weeks hence. Even on Sunday, four days after the great Statesman's death, we had got no neater than that the date might possibly be the'16th of June, some four weeks from the fatal morning. It was a great relief to everybody when the information came, on Monday, that the funeral was fixed for Saturday, in Westminster Abbey, with as much simplicity of parade and pageant and circumstance as possible in connection with a really national funeral. The man who had again and again refused a peerage, who would accept no external tokens in the shape of honours, whose greatest pride was in the position which his career had given him ae a distinguished commoner, was not the man for a resplendent. ceremonial funeral.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.