The funeral of the Dowager Lady Sidmonth took place in
Albury parish churchyard on Monday last. Lady Sidmouth. who died in her hundredth year, was " a link with the past," in a specially interesting sense. As a girl, she had lived in the Speaker's house, and had a vivid recollection of hearing debates in which Pitt and Fox took part,—those great oratorical duels which Byron has so well described in " The Age of Bronze." She also could remember hearing Nelson describe to Lord Sidmouth his proposed plan of operations in the naval campaign which ended at Trafalgar. Nelson traced his plans on a table with his finger, which he dipped in a glass of wine. Here is a terrible temptation for a costume- painter. Empire dining-room and beginning-of-the-century dress, Addington's solemn wig and Nelson's bright eyes, queer-shaped decanters filled with port and madeira, and the little girl in a mob-cap listening, open-eyed, at the table-edge. Let us hope we may be spared the picture. This link with the past seems, however, nothing when put next a fact recorded by the late Lord Lovelace, who died about three weeks ago. At the age of five, he wrote in a, memorandum book to the effect that he had that day heard old Lord Onslow say that he had often dined in company with a man named Augustin, who was one of the sentinels at the execution of Charles I. Lord Lovelace then saw a man who knew a man who heard Charles's dying words.
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