ONDON - It was a morning bathed in the September sunshine of England. It was an unforgettable outpouring of grief and gratitude. It was an occasion when real people shed real tears for a real princess. It was a day not happy - but in its way glorious.
And as the tenor bell at Westminster Abbey chimed once a minute, and as an ancient people paused to say farewell to their young princess, it was clear that this was, above all, a complicated moment in the life of one of the most complicated nations on earth.
The words of I Corinthians - ''through a glass, darkly'' - echoed through a day of sympathy and ceremony, but in truth the procession, funeral, and burial of Diana provided a clear window into the complexity and contradictions of modern Britain.
In the nave of Westminster Abbey, in the crowds in Hyde Park, along the Mall, and on Horseguards Road there was, along with the sorrow and circumstance, a moment of soul-searching. It was the culmination of a weeklong exercise of national reflection: an analysis of the structure of society, an inquiry into the ability of an individual to make a difference, an examination of the possibility to do good in a world full of evils and, most ominously, a reminder of the responsibility Britons and their leaders bear for Diana's own unhappiness.
But the apex of this extraordinary national odyssey may have been the excoriating eulogy by the princess's brother that, like much of the week's events, carried powerful criticism of a royal family that guards its prerogative to control and of a tabloid press that prides itself for being out of control. The remarks were nothing less than a call for a revolution in the way the monarchy works, in the way the press operates, and in the way the country, still so much more comfortable with form than feeling, expresses its sentiments.
This is a different country than it was only a few days ago, and the events of the past week - the unprecedented flood of emotion across a land of stoicism, the historic bowing of a reluctant monarchy to the wishes of an insistent nation - have only served to accelerate the rate of change. Nobody can predict what the past week will do to a country organized by class, steeped in tradition, bound by protocol, dominated by duty, and animated by deference, except to say that it will be changed, unalterably and unpredictably.
In spirit if not in fact, this is already a more egalitarian society. In these crowds, gathered together shoulder to shoulder, were ladies in smart frocks and hats and punters in jeans and T-shirts. That was most striking during the 60 seconds when the whole nation kept its silence. An observer standing in the middle of Hyde Park could see pensioners with gnarls on their fingers; punkers in black with red roses in their hands; couples with fingers hooked together in sadness, all framed by the spires and towers of London.
Its only antecedent in history - anyone's history - is the Blitz, when hundreds of thousands of Londoners took wartime refuge in the Underground to sleep and survive. That experience, shared privation rather than shared grief, led to the Beveridge Report of November 1942, which laid out a political and economic blueprint for a new Britain and for the welfare state.
Already the death of Diana has led to the death of a good deal of Britain's tradition. Protocol was always regarded as a quaint relic here, something to be husbanded for its own sake, in part because the majesty of the monarchy and the notion of the nation depended on it. In one week, more traditions and elements of protocol were shattered than in decades.
They were brought down by a woman who was divorced from the heir to the throne; who spoke openly about her personal tribulations; who gave the monarchy a common touch; and whose ''blood family,'' as Earl Spencer pointedly put it, vowed to help crush the very traditions that oppressed her.
Still, royal protocol created much of the mystique of yesterday's event. The coffin was accompanied by the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery in traditional funeral configuration. The Welsh guardsmen chosen for duty were each over 6 feet tall. They wore bearskins, removing them only to hand them to two cap orderlies when they carried the coffin.
But the procession was for a royal rebel, and the coffin carried a royal outcast.
Diana bridged the distance between the people and the palace. ''Now the expectation is that all the royal family must be on the bridge, touching the people,'' said Lawrence Goldman, an Oxford University historian. ''There's a new recognition that a monarchy, if there is to be one, must be a working monarchy.''
Diana reconciled the irreconcilable, which is the achievement and the challenge of the modern age.
Her funeral brought together the poor and the rich, the worlds of show business, politics, fashion, and the crown. It was a state occasion best remembered by a song from Elton John, who gave new oxygen to his ''Candle in the Wind.'' It was a somber event and yet a celebration of life. It was a royal occasion and yet it was plainly the burial of a deeply estranged royal. It was a regal procession and yet it was a people's parade. It was a funeral, but for much of London it was passed not as a morning in a church but as a day at the park.
The result was perhaps the most extraordinary funeral in centuries, the only possible comparison being another often regarded as a harbinger of great change: the pre-World War I farewell to Edward VII attended by nine kings walking in three rows of three, followed by seven queens, five heirs apparent, and 40 other imperial or royal highnesses.
''The muffled tongue tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace,'' Barbara Tuchman wrote in her classic account of the funeral, ''but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze.''
For Edward VII in 1910, the guests who mattered came in royal yachts and royal trains. For Diana in 1997, the guests who mattered came in buses and subway trains and on foot.
At her funeral, TV viewers seldom saw the faces of the famous. The places of honor went to the National Rubella Trust, the Leukemia Research Appeal for Wales, the New Zealand Federation for the Blind, the Princess of Wales Children's Health Campaign, and the Northern Ireland Pre-School Play Groups Association.
Why the fuss far from Britain's white cliffs and emerald shores, why the attention throughout a planet that no longer treats Britain with favor or fear?
Because this is a country that, even to republicans from America, even to rivals from France, even to antagonists from Ireland, even to the children of the colonies that once formed a red splotch across the globe, matters, and that matters in a way that no other nation ever did. This week that country changed, and with it, so did the world, and so did we all.
