[Browning's funeral.] ... One day I did break off though and I went to Browning's funeral at Westminster Abbey - under protest - for I hate that beautiful heaven to be turned into a stone-mason's yard for anybody - no one is good enough to despoil that divine citadel - and I am sick of dead bodies and want them burnt and scattered to the winds. It wasn't impressive, no, not a bit - people said to me "How impressive." I said, "Yes indeed" - one has to in the world, but it wasn't, it was stupid, no candles, no incense, no copes, no nothing that was nice. My dear, now tey have got these churches they don't know what to do with them - placards all about say, "Seats for the Press," "Mourners," and the procession poor and sorry - a Canon four feet high, next one six feet high - surplice, red hood like trousers down the back - you know them all. I would have given something for a banner or two - and much I would have given if a chorister had come out of the triforium and rent the air with a trumpet - how flat those English are - most people are ... And when the coffin, covered with a pall, is carried on the shoulders of six men it looks like a big beetle - and what Paul said was partly so glorious that it is the last word that need be said, and partly so poor, and flat, that I wondered that any one took the pains to say it; but I spent the time looking for the roof and its groining, and the diapered work, and wanted a service in praise of the church, and wondered who had built it, and why his name was forgotten. Why couldn't they leave him in Royal Venice? One can almost hear people speaking in the House of Commons in the grave they have put him in - fancy hearing Chamberlain when one wants to be quiet - or Labouchere - what a doom. ...