The city of London, the Committee of Merchants at Lloyd’s Coffee-House, and the respective corporations of several cities and chief towns in different parts of the united kingdom, publicly expressed their sense of the national loss, by the death of it’s principal hero; and proposed various plans for perpetuating the remembrance of his transcendent services, by monumental erections, &c.

The body of the hero, which had been preserved in spirits, was brought to England in the Victory; the crew having positively refused to part with the corpse of their adored commander, till it should be safely landed in their native country.  They were resolved, they said, one and all, to accompany him, as it should please Heaven, either to the bottom of the ocean, or see his sacred remains deposited in the honoured tomb which would, doubtless, be proudly prepared for them by a grateful nation; and could not suffer the corpse to be sent home in any ship subject to capture by the enemy.

After laying in state, a few days, at Greenwich Hospital, the body was conveyed, with all possible aquatic grandeur and solemnity, to the Admiralty; from whence, the next day, Thursday, January 9, 1806, borne on a grand funeral car, and with a pomp of procession scarcely ever equalled the illustrious hero’s hallowed remains were finally deposited beneath the dome of St. Paul’s cathedral.

Never, perhaps, were the mournful obsequies of any hero so numerously and so respectably attended; never was any human being deposited in the earth more universally and sincerely wept by every eye which beheld any part of the solemn ceremony.  The tears of millions, on that melancholy day, bore testimony to his matchless worth; to the truth of that sentiment which he had piously pronounced, in his last moments—­“Thank God, I have been enabled to do my duty to my King and Country!”

May the same Almighty Power inspire the hearts of his King and Country, to fulfil, in their utmost extent, every wish and expectation of the Dying Hero!  And may each virtuous individual, in whom the blood of the Nelsons shall flow, to the last drop which can be traced, for ever find friendly patronage among the rulers of a nation, which has certainly, at an eventful crisis, been powerfully exalted, and perhaps preserved, by the example and influence of the immortal hero, who so freely and fatally shed his own last drop in the faithful service of his King and Country!

THE END.

* * * * *

Printed by Stanhope and Tilling,
Ranelagh