No need to say how this loyalty and affection culminated within a month in the Jubilee demonstration on the 21st of June. In Westminster Abbey I had a position from which I could observe the emotions as they passed over the face of the Queen throughout the whole of the impressive ceremonial of that memorable day; and it seemed to me, familiar as I was with the feelings with which Her Majesty had looked forward to this event, that I could divine some of the thoughts which under that serenely dignified demeanour were passing through Her Majesty's heart and mind. Deep and manifold I felt they must be, as she looked back to the day when she had last sat there in the Coronation Chair, through the vista of years of happiness and trial, of anxiety and bereavement, of national struggle and peril and triumph, all culminating in an unparalleled demonstration of her people's love. At such a time would not memory recur to the words written to her on her Accession by Prince Albert fifty years before (26th June 1837)?--"Now you are Queen of the mightiest land of Europe. In your hand lies the happiness of millions. May Heaven assist you and strengthen you with its strength in that high but difficult task! I hope that your reign may be long, happy, and glorious, and that your efforts may be rewarded by the thankfulness and love of your subjects!" Full of the feeling I have expressed, on my return home it shaped itself without effort of mine into the words of the following sonnet. Some weeks elapsed before I had the courage to send it to the Queen; but it at once found such favour with Her Majesty that, in a letter to me next day (11th August), she wrote: "The Queen thanks Sir T. Martin for his kind letter, and for the very beautiful lines which he has written.... The Queen hopes he will print and even publish them." They were accordingly published next month in _Blackwood's Magazine_:-- IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. _21st June 1887._ Again within these walls, again alone! A long, long tract of fateful years between The day I knelt, to rise a crowned queen, Vowed thenceforth to be all my people's own, And this, when, with an empire wider grown, Again I kneel, before high Heaven to lay My thanks for all, which since that earlier day Has blessed my goings, and upheld my throne. God! in this hour I think of him, who made My young life sweet, who lightened every care, In sorest straits my judgment rightly swayed, Lived, thought for me, all times and everywhere; For him I thank Thee chief, who by his aid Nerved me the burden of a crown to bear!