_November_ 13 [1882]. For the first time for 25 years I went out to see a sight--to Victoria Station to see the return of the Foot Guards. Anybody might have been proud of these men's appearance--like shabby skeletons, or at least half their former size--in worn but well-cleaned campaigning uniform; not spruce or showy, but alert, silent, steady. And not a man of them all, I am sure, but thought he had nothing in what he had done to be proud of; tho' _we_ might well be proud of _them_. Royalty was there with its usual noble simplicity to bid them an unobtrusive welcome. The men, not the Royalty, were to be all in all on that occasion. A more deeply felt and less showy scene could not have been imagined. So Miss Nightingale noted at the time, and presently she included her description in one of the letters which she sent every now and then at the Commanding Officer's request for him to read out to the men of the Volunteer Corps at Romsey, near her old home. She used the incident again in an address to the Nightingale Probationers (1883). A few days later (Nov. 18, 1882) there was a Royal Review, on the Horse Guards Parade, of the troops returned from the Egyptian campaign, and Miss Nightingale was present, at Mr. Gladstone's invitation, on a stand erected in the Prime Minister's garden. She was seated between him and Mrs. Gladstone, and Mrs. Gladstone, in recalling the occasion, used to say that "there were tears in Miss Nightingale's dear eyes as the poor ragged fellows marched past." Her presence on this occasion was observed, and she was invited accordingly to attend the opening of the new Law Courts by the Queen (Dec. 4). She was given a place on the dais, and the Queen, noticing her, sent a message to say "how pleased she was to see Miss Nightingale there, looking well."