In 1867 the Queen again opened Parliament in person, her speech being read by the Lord Chancellor.
The grievous accident of the breaking of the ice in Regent's Park, when it was covered with skaters and spectators, took place on the 15th of January.
"The Early Tears of the Prince Consort," the first instalment of his "Life," brought out under the direction of General Grey, with much of the information supplied by the Queen, was published, and afforded a nobler memorial to the Prince than any work in stone or metal.
On the 20th of May her Majesty laid the foundation of the Albert Hall. She was accompanied by the Princesses Louise and Beatrice, Prince Leopold, and Prince Christian, and received by the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, and the Queen's elder sons. The latter presented her with a bouquet, which she took, kissing her sons. In reply to the Prince of Wales's speech her Majesty spoke in accents singularly inaudible for her. She mentioned the struggle she had undergone before she had brought herself to take part in that day's proceedings, but said she had been sustained by the thought that she was thus promoting her husband's designs.
In June and July the Queen of Prussia and the Sultan of Turkey came in turn to England. The latter was with her Majesty in her yacht at a great naval review held in most tempestuous weather off Spithead. In the end of July the Empress of the French paid a short private visit to her Majesty at Osborne.
On the 20th of August the Queen left for Balmoral. On her way north she spent a few days with the Duke and Duchess of Roxburgh at Fleurs, when her Majesty visited Melrose and Abbotsford. After inspecting with great interest the memorials of Sir Walter Scott, who had been presented to her when she was a little girl at Kensington Palace, she complied with a request that she should write her name in the great author's journal, adding the modest comment in her own journal that she felt it presumption in her to do so.
During the autumn the Queen paid an informal visit to the Duke of Richmond's shooting lodge in Glen Fiddich. On the first evening of her stay the break with the luggage failed to appear, and her Majesty had to suffer some of the half-comical inconveniences of ordinary travellers. She had to dine in her riding skirt, with a borrowed black lace veil arranged as a head-dress, and she had to go to bed without the necessary accompaniments to her toilette.
In 1867 the terrible news from Mexico that the Emperor Maximilian (Archduke of Austria and husband of the Queen's cousin, Princess Charlotte of Belgium) had been shot by his rebel subjects, while his wife was hopelessly insane, rendered it a mercy to all interested in the family that old King Leopold had not lived to see the wreck of so many hopes.
In 1868 the Queen gave to her people the first "Leaves" from her journal in the Highlands, which afforded most pleasant glimpses of the wonderfully happy family life, the chief holidays of which had been spent at Balmoral. Her Majesty sent a copy to Charles Dickens, with the graceful inscription that it was the gift of "one of the humblest of writers to one of the greatest."
On the 13th of May the Queen laid the foundation stone of St. Thomas's Hospital, and on the 20th she held a great review of twenty-seven thousand volunteers in Windsor Park. Instead of her mother or her little children, her daughter-in-law and grown-up daughters, the Princess of Wales, Princess Christian, and Princess Louise, were in the carriage with her, while in room of her husband and her brother or cousin, her two soldier sons rode one on each side of the carriage.