Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, vol 2 | Page 3

estate. She survived her brother, the Duke of Gloucester, ten years, and died at the age of seventy-two at the Ranger's House, Blackheath, from which she had dispensed many kindly charities. At her funeral the royal standard was hoisted half- mast high on Greenwich Hospital, the Observatory, the churches of St. Mary and St. Alphege, and on Blackheath. She was laid, with nearly all her royal race for the last two generations, in the burial-place of kings, St. George's Chapel, Windsor. Prince Albert occupied his stall as a Knight of the Garter, with a mourning scarf across his field- marshal's uniform.
In the middle of January, 1845, the Queen and Prince Albert went on a visit to the Duke of Buckingham at Stowe, which was still unstripped of its splendid possessions and interesting antiquarian relics. The huge gathering of neighbours and tenants included waggons full of labourers, admitted into the park to see the Queen's arrival and the illumination of the great house at night.
The amusements of the next two days, the ordinary length of a royal visit, began with battues for the Prince, when the accumulation of game was so enormous that, in place of the fact being remarkable that "he hit almost everything he fired at," it would have been singular if a good shot could have avoided doing so. Fifty beaters, so near each other that their sticks almost touched, entered a thick cover and drove the game past the place where the sportsmen were stationed, into the open space of the park. Out the hares rushed from every quarter, "so many of them, that it was often impossible to stop more than one out of half-a-dozen. The ground immediately in front of the shooters became strewn with dead and dying.... It was curious to behold the evident reluctance with which the hares left their retreat, and then their perplexity at finding themselves so beset without. Many actually made for the canal, and swam like dogs across a piece of water nearly a hundred yards wide, shaking themselves upon landing, and making off without any apparent distress. The pheasants were still more averse 'to come and be killed.' For some time not one appeared above the trees. The cocks were heard crowing like domestic fowls, as the numerous tribe retreated before the sticks of the advancing army of beaters. Upon arriving, however, at the edge of the wood, quite a cloud ascended, and the slaughter was proportionately great."
"Slaughter," not sport, is the appropriate word. One cannot help thinking that so it must have struck the Prince; nor are we surprised that, on the next opportunity he had of exercising a sportsman's legitimate vocation, with the good qualities of patience, endurance, and skill, which it is calculated to call forth, emphatic mention is made of his keen enjoyment.
Besides shooting there was walking for both ladies and gentlemen, to the number of twenty guests, "in the mild, clear weather," in the beautiful park. There was the usual county gathering, in order to confer on the upper ten thousand, within a radius of many miles, the much-prized honour of "meeting" the Queen at a dinner or a ball. Lastly, her Majesty and the Prince planted the oak and the cedar which were to rank like heirlooms, and be handed down as trophies of a royal visit and princely favour, to future generations.
The Queen and Prince Albert returned to Windsor on the evening of Saturday, the 18th of January, and on the afternoon of Monday, the 20th, they started again to pay a long-projected visit to her old friend the Duke of Wellington at Strathfieldsaye. It was known that the Duke had set his heart on entertaining his sovereign in his own house, and she not only granted him the boon, but in consideration of his age, his laurels, and the long and intimate connection between them, she let the visit have more of a private and friendly character than the visits of sovereigns to subjects were wont to have. However, the country did not lose its gala. Arches of winter evergreens instead of summer flowers, festive banners, loyal inscriptions, yeoman corps, holiday faces, met her on all sides. At Swallowfield--a name which Mary Russell Mitford has made pleasant to English ears--"no less a person than the Speaker of the House of Commons," the representative of an old Huguenot refugee, the Right Honourable John Shaw Lefevre, commanded the troop of yeomanry.
The Iron Duke met his honoured guests in the hall and conducted them to the library. Every day the same formula was gone through. "The Duke takes the Queen in to dinner, sits by her Majesty, and after dinner gets up and says, 'With your Majesty's permission I give the health of her Majesty,' and then the same to the Prince. They