Every Christmas had for years brought with it a letter from the Queen with her good wishes for Lady Martin and myself, accompanied by a beautifully painted card for Lady Martin, and some valuable book for my library enriched by a gracious inscription. In her letter of this year were the words, "_The Queen is loth to part with the year in which she has met with so much affection and kindness_," and they suggested to me the following sonnet. It was my custom to send to the Queen a Christmas and New Year greeting, generally in verse, and I made the sonnet my greeting for the year 1888. The Queen in her reply requested that it might be published, and this was done:-- OSBORNE. _Before Midnight, 31st December 1887._ One hour, and 'twill be numbered with the past, My year of Jubilee, that to my heart Has tribute brought from cot and hall and mart Of loyalty and love;--a treasure vast, There to be nursed and cherished to the last, And with that one dear memory held apart, Still sweetening through the years its bitter smart With love in kingly story unsurpassed! Go, then, bright year, go with a fond good-bye, For all thy days with loving-kindness fraught! And may all blessings from the God on high Light on my people for their loving thought, Keeping them worthy of the days gone by, And the great name by their forefathers wrought! CHAPTER V. In the magnificent procession which attended the Queen to and from Westminster Abbey, no figure attracted more attention, or excited greater admiration, than that of the Crown Prince of Germany, in his white Cuirassier's uniform, and rivetting all eyes by his noble head and majestic bearing. Little was it then dreamed that within a year he was to succeed his father as Emperor of the Germans, when himself stricken by the cruel malady under which he sank within a few months after his accession. The tragic circumstances of his death awakened a very profound feeling throughout this country, and men's thoughts turned to the uncrowned Empress whom he left behind, and also to the Queen, who thus saw the fair hopes blighted, with which she and the Prince Consort had resigned their first and highly gifted child to the man of her heart, by whose side they might expect in time to see her throned as sovereign over a mighty kingdom. The Emperor Frederic died on the 15th of June 1888. As soon as her health permitted, the widowed Empress decided to come to England for a time; and the Queen wrote to me suggesting that some special expression of public sympathy should meet her daughter on her arrival. That this sympathy would be generally and warmly expressed through the usual channels could not be doubted. But I ventured to think, that the expression of it might not unfitly be concentrated in the compacter form of verse. With this view I wrote the following sonnet, which appeared in the _Standard_ two days before the Empress reached England:-- TO THE EMPRESS FREDERIC.