Behind the house a winding footpath leads up the hill to the rocky cleft from which issues in a succession of white and foamy twists and downward springs, the Falls of the Glassalt. Turning round from the spectacle, the stranger looks down on the loch in its semicircle of mountains. Gaining the crest of the hill and descending the edge on the opposite side, the foot of the grim giant Loch-na-Gar is reached.
Among the visitors at Balmoral in 1858 was Florence Nightingale. The Queen had before this presented her with a jewel in remembrance of her services in the Crimea. The design was as follows: a field of white enamel was charged with a St. George's cross in ruby red enamel, from which shot rays of gold. This field was encircled by a black band bearing the scroll "Blessed are the merciful." The shield was set in a framework of palm-branches in green enamel tipped with gold, and united at the bottom by a riband of blue enamel inscribed "Crimea" in gold letters. The cypher V.R. surmounted by a crown in diamonds, was charged upon the centre of the cross. On the back was a gold tablet which bore an inscription from the hand of her Majesty.
While the Queen was in Scotland the marriage in Germany of one of the daughters of the Princess of Hohenlohe took place. Princess Adelaide, like her sister Princess Elise, possessed of many attractions, became the wife of Prince Frederick of Schleswig Holstein Sonderberg- Augustenberg, the brother of Prince Christian, destined to become the husband of Princess Helena.
CHAPTER XXIX.
DEATH OF THE PRINCE Of LEININGEN—BIRTH OF PRINCESS BEATRICE—BESTOWAL
OF THE VICTORIA CROSS—INDIAN MUTINY.
The court returned to Windsor in October, and in November a severe blow struck the Queen in the death of her brother, the Prince of Leiningen. A second fit of apoplexy ended his life while his sister, the Princess of Hohenlohe, watched by his death-bed. Prince Leiningen was fifty-two years of age. He had served in the Bavarian army, and was a man of recognised influence among his countrymen in the German troubles of 1848, which cost him his principality. He had married in 1829, when he was twenty-seven years of age and when the Queen was only a little girl of ten, Marie (née) Countess of Kletelsberg. He left two sons, the eldest of whom, Prince Ernest, entered the English navy.
Her Majesty's references to the death in her letters to King Leopold are very pathetic. "Oh! dearest uncle, this blow is a heavy one, my grief very bitter. I loved my dearest, only brother, most tenderly." And again, "We three were particularly fond of each other, and never felt or fancied that we were not real geschwister (children of the same parents). We knew but one parent, our mother, so became very closely united, and so I grew up; the distance which difference of age placed between us entirely vanished…." The aged Duchess of Kent was "terribly distressed, but calm and resigned."
Baron Stockmar was with the royal family at this time. It was his last visit to England. His company, always earnestly coveted, especially by the Prince, was apt to be bestowed in an erratic fashion characteristic of the man. Some one of the royal children would unexpectedly announce, "Papa, do you know the Baron is in his room," which was the first news of his arrival.
During the stay of the Court at Osborne in December, the graceful gift of the Resolute was made by the Americans to the Queen, and accepted by her Majesty in person, with marked gratification. The Resolute was one of the English ships which had gone to the north seas in search of Sir John Franklin. It had been abandoned in the ice, found by an American vessel, taken across the Atlantic, refitted, and by a happy thought offered as a suitable token to the Queen.
On the 14th of April, 1857, the Queen's fifth daughter and ninth and last child was born at Buckingham Palace. A fortnight afterwards the Duchess of Gloucester, the last of George the III. and Queen Charlotte's children, died in her eighty-third year. The Queen wrote of her to King Leopold, who must have been well acquainted with her in his youth, "Her age, and her being a link with bygone times and generations, as well as her great kindness, amiability, and unselfishness, rendered her more and more dear and precious to us all, and we all looked upon her as a sort of grandmother." Sixty-two years before, when the venerable Princess was a charming maiden of eighteen, she had gloried in the tidings of her princely cousin's laurels, won on the battlefields of Flanders. More than twenty years afterwards, when Princess Charlotte descended the staircase of Carlton House after her marriage with Prince Leopold, "she was met at the foot with open arms by the Princess Mary, whose face was bathed in tears." The first wedding had removed the obstacle to the second, which was celebrated a few weeks later. The Duchess lived for eighteen years happily with her husband, then spent more than twenty years in widowhood. She ended her long life at Gloucester House, Park Lane. At her earnest request, she was buried without pomp or show with her people in the family vault at Windsor.