Washington ? The capital honored Ronald Reagan on Thursday with a procession by tens of thousands past his casket, quiet prelude to a majestic funeral shaped by his own hand. Visitors from the Reagan-era ranks of power and friendship flocked to his widow’s side.

Boy Scouts and Supreme Court justices, tourists and world leaders including his long-ago Soviet rival Mikhail Gorbachev were among those who gazed upon Reagan’s casket in hushed contemplation under the Capitol Dome. President Bush, back from his meeting with world leaders in Georgia, briefly paid respects in advance of his eulogy for the 40th president today.

President Bush and first lady Laura Bush pay their respects to former President Ronald Reagan at the U.S. Capitol.

Across from the White House, Nancy Reagan received a stream of visitors drawn from a list of the powerful, then and now.

“To Ronnie,” former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, first to see Mrs. Reagan, wrote in the Blair House condolence book. “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who shared an Irish ancestry with Reagan, also visited the former first lady, with his wife, Mila.

The former British and Canadian leaders were joining Bush and his father today in eulogizing Reagan at Washington National Cathedral to close the curtain on the capital’s elaborate state funeral — Washington’s last goodbye before Reagan’s sunset burial on the grounds of his presidential library outside Los Angeles.

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Bush and his wife, Laura, paused by Reagan’s casket in the Capitol Rotunda, bowed their heads and closed their eyes. The president swept his hands along the flag-draped casket and the couple left to visit Mrs. Reagan.

Reagan’s Soviet rival-turned-friend, Gorbachev, visited, too, and wrote in the condolence book in Russian, “I convey my deep feelings of condolence to dear Nancy and the whole family.” Gorbachev then visited Reagan’s casket in the Rotunda, reaching out and briefly laying his palm on it.

The Capitol sergeant at arms office, which oversees security in the building, estimated 30,000 people had viewed the casket in the first 10 hours of Reagan’s lying in state. His casket was to remain continuously on view until this morning.

Boy scouts in khaki shorts and neckerchiefs, office workers with ID tags around their necks, senators and tourists with their children in tow, an American Indian in feathered headdress, all came to pay their respects.

Art Kreatschman, 52, of New Windsor, Md., stood in line for three hours before his few seconds in the Rotunda. “I did OK until I got inside and then it was very moving,” he said. “I teared up little.”