Mr Robertson was dead, but his son and successor in the Pale estate, Mr, now Sir Henry Beyer Robertson, was delighted to have the opportunity of fulfilling his father's intention. On being made aware of this, the Queen decided to make the visit in the summer of the following year on her way to Balmoral. When this decision became known, the people of the principality, who are as a rule most loyal, looked forward with enthusiasm to the prospect of seeing among them the Queen, who had hitherto been to them only a revered name. Everything was done which loyalty could devise to show how highly the royal presence among them was valued. The only cloud on the general satisfaction was the knowledge that the visit could only be for a very few days--from the 23rd to the 28th of August, one of which was a Sunday. The Queen arrived at Pale on the 23rd at 7 A.M., and had not been many hours there before she received a deputation of the farm tenants of the adjoining district, who had prepared a walking-stick of their native wood for Her Majesty's acceptance. They were surprised, and more than delighted, by the royal acceptance of it being made in Welsh, the Queen having immediately on her arrival taken pains to learn so much of that far from easy language as served her for this and other similar occasions. In no other way could Her Majesty have so thoroughly touched the hearts of her Welsh subjects. The incident, of which the tidings spread over Wales within a few hours, heightened the enthusiasm with which she was everywhere received. Two days afterwards this was markedly shown in her public visit to Wrexham, the centre of the mining and other industries of Denbighshire, where a reception in Aston Park, the property of Sir Robert Cunliffe, admirably arranged by the Mayor and Corporation of Wrexham, awaited Her Majesty. All the leading people of the adjoining counties were present, and many hundred thousands of the working population assembled both there and on the five miles of road along which the Queen drove from Ruabon, to which the royal train had come from Pale. A choir of 600 singers gave the Queen her first idea of the choral singing for which Wales is famous. The demeanour of the working men, rough in exterior, and not always on ordinary occasions gentle in manners, produced a most favourable impression on Her Majesty. "They all behaved like gentlemen," she said to me when, two days afterwards, accompanied by the Prince and Princess Henry of Battenberg and the Princess Alix of Hesse (now the Czarina), she honoured Lady Martin and myself by a visit to our villa near Llangollen. It had not occurred to us why the Queen had chosen that day, the 26th of August, for the visit. But the reason flashed upon us, when, turning to Lady Martin as she inscribed her name with the date on a sheet of paper prepared for the purpose, she looked up and said, "The dear Prince's birthday!" Then we saw that as the Prince's _Life_ had been written in