The Court had longer time to enjoy the sea air and quiet of Osborne, where, however, sorrow intruded in the shape of the news of the death of Count Mensdorff, the uncle by marriage both of the Queen and Prince Albert, to whom they were warmly attached. Though he had been no prince, only a French emigrant officer in the Austrian service, when he married the sister of the Duchess of Kent, he was held in high esteem by his wife's family for the distinction with which he had served as a soldier, and for his many good qualities.
Princess Hohenlohe, with a son and daughter, came to Osborne as a stage to Scotland and Abergeldie, where she was to visit her mother, the Duchess of Kent, and where she could also best enjoy the Queen's society. The poor Princess, who made a stay of several months in this country, had need of a mother's and a sister's sympathy. A heavy sorrow had lately befallen her. The eldest daughter of the Hohenlohe family, Princess Elise, a girl of great promise, had died at Venice of consumption in her twenty-first year.
Yachting excursions were again made to Devonshire and Cornwall, to Torquay and the often-visited beauties of Mount Edgcumbe and the banks of the Tamar. There was a proposal of a visit to the King of the Belgians, with the Channel Islands to be touched at on the way. One part of the programme had to be given up, on account of the tempestuous weather. The yacht, after waiting to allow Prince Albert to pay a flying visit—the last—to the Duke of Wellington at Walmer, ran up the Scheldt in one of the pauses in the storm, and the travellers reached Antwerp at seven o'clock on the morning of the 11th of August, "in a hurricane of wind and rain."
But the weather is of little consequence when friends meet. King Leopold was waiting for his welcome guests, and immediately carried them off to his country palace, for their visit this time was to him and not to any of the old Flemish towns.
The Queen and Prince Albert, with their children, stayed at Laeken for three days, returning to Antwerp in time for a visit to the cathedral and the museum, before sailing in the same unpropitious weather for Flushing. The intention was still to cross on the following morning to the Channel Islands, but the wet, wild weather did not change, and the yacht remained where it was, the Queen indemnifying herself for the disappointment by landing and going over an old Dutch town and a farmhouse, with which she was much pleased.
On the 30th of August the Court went to Balmoral by Edinburgh. Soon after her arrival the Queen had the gratifying intelligence that a large legacy, about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, had been left to her and her heirs by one of her subjects—Mr. Campden Nield— a gentleman without near relatives, who had lived in the most penurious way, denying himself the very necessaries of life.
The Queen's comment on the bequest to King Leopold was like her. "It is astonishing, but it is satisfactory to see that people have so much confidence that it will not be thrown away, and so it certainly will not be." Baron Stockmar held with some justice that it was "a monument reared to the Queen during her life, in recognition of her simple, honourable, and constitutional career."
Her Majesty and Prince Albert went on the 16th of September for their customary two days' stay by Loch Muich, though they had been startled in the morning by a newspaper report of the death of the Duke of Wellington at Walmer. But the rumour had arisen so often during these many years that nobody believed it, now that it was true.
The little party started in the course of the forenoon on a showery day. Arrived at the Loch, the Queen walked up the side to Alt-na- Dearg, a "burn" and fall, then rode up the ravine hung with birch and mountain-ash, and walked again along the top of the steep hills to points which command a view of Lord Panmure's country, "Mount Keen and the Ogilvie Hills."
A little farther on, while resting and looking down on the Glassalt Shiel and the head of the loch, the Queen, by a curious coincidence, missed the watch which the Duke of Wellington had given her. Her Majesty sent back a keeper to inquire about her loss; in the meanwhile she walked on and descended by the beautiful falls of the Glassalt, one hundred and fifty feet in height, which she compares to those of the Bruar. The cottage or shiel of the Glassalt had just been built for the Queen, and offered accommodation in its dainty little dining- room and drawing-room for her to rest and refresh herself. After she had eaten luncheon, she set out again on a pony, passed another waterfall, called the Burn of the Spullan, and reached the wild solitary Dhu Loch.