fterwards, and very merry they were.

In August and September the Prime Minister spent some weeks at Balmoral,
and wrote as follows on his last day there:

_Lord John Russell to Lady John Russell_

BALMORAL, _September_ 6, 1849

I leave this place to-morrow.... No hostess could be more charming
or more easy than the Queen has been--or more kind and agreeable
than the Prince, and I shall leave this place with increased
attachment to them.

The Queen had been to Ireland in August, and Lord Dufferin wrote an
interesting account of her visit in a letter to Lady John.

_Lord Dufferin to Lady John Russell_

_September_ 10, 1849

As the newspaper reporters have already described all, nay more
than was to be seen on the occasion of the Queen's visit to
Ireland, I need not trouble you with any of my own experiences
during those auspicious days--suffice it to say that the people
were frantic with loyalty and enthusiasm. Indeed, I never witnessed
so touching a sight as when the Queen from her quarter-deck took
leave of the Irish people. It was a sweet, calm, silent evening,
and the sun just setting behind the Wicklow mountains bathed all
things in golden floods of light. Upon the beach were crowded in
thousands the screaming bother-headed people, full of love and
devotion for her, her children, and her house, surging to and fro
like some horrid sea and asking her to come back quick to them, and
bidding her God-speed.... It was a beautiful historical picture,
and one which one thought of for a long time after Queen and ships
and people had vanished away. I suspect that she too must have
thought of it that night as she sat upon the deck and sailed away
into the darkness--and perhaps she wondered as she looked back upon
the land, which ever has been and still is, the dwelling of so much
wrong and misery, whether it should be written in history
hereafter, that in _her_ reign, and under _her_ auspices,
Ireland first became prosperous and her people contented. Directly
after the Queen's departure, I started on a little tour round the
West coast, where I saw such sights as could be seen nowhere else.
The scenery is beautiful and wild.... But after one has been
travelling for a little while in the far West one soon loses all
thought of the scenery, or the climate, or anything else, in
astoni