It was small use for the parliamentary misrepresentatives to advise
treating Victoria of the Good Deeds with the courtesy due to a
foreign sovereign visiting the country. Under the miles of flags
she drove, red, white, and blue, tossing themselves in the sweet
spring air, and up from the warm hearts of the surging masses of
people, men and women alike, Crimean soldiers and old crones in
rags, gentry and peasants, went a greeting I never before heard
given to any sovereign, for it was a sigh of infinite content that
trembled on the lips and then broke into a deep sob, as a knot of
Trinity College students in a spontaneous burst of song flung out
the last verse of 'The New Wearing of the Green.'**

'And so upon St. Patrick's Day, Victoria, she has said
Each Irish regiment shall wear the Green beside the Red;
And she's coming to ould Ireland, who away so long has been,
And dear knows but into Dublin she'll ride Wearing of the Green.'

**Alfred Perceval Graves.

The first cheers were faint and broken, and the emotion that
quivered on every face and the tears that gleamed in a thousand eyes
made it the most touching spectacle in the world. 'Foreign
Sovereign, indeed!' She was the Queen of Ireland, and the nation of
courtiers and hero worshippers was at her feet. There was the
history of five hundred years in that greeting, and to me it spoke
volumes.

Plenty of people there were in the crowd, too, who were heartily
'agin the Government'; but Daniel O'Connell is not the only Irishman