An accident to the princess royal, in June, was the cause of a great deal of anxiety to the queen. The young lady was melting sealing-wax by a candle, to seal a letter, when her sleeve caught fire and her right arm was severely burned from the elbow to the shoulder. Had assistance not been near, the princess might have been burned to death; but two ladies who were in the room acted with praiseworthy presence of mind, and extinguished the flame with a hearth-rug. In a few weeks the wounds were entirely healed. {428}In the autumn the court retired to Balmoral, and one of the most distinguished visitors presented to the queen and prince was Miss Florence Nightingale. The prince wrote of her: "She put before us all the defects of our present military hospital system, and the reforms that are needed. We are much pleased with her; she is extremely modest." A fortnight later she became the queen's guest, and Lord Panmure, the minister of war, was invited to meet her in order that she might lay before him an account of all she had seen at the Crimea, and her opinions as to the reforms that ought to be made. Miss Nightingale was treated with all the honors due so perfect a woman and so great a philanthropist. [[A.D. 1857.]] When parliament opened in February, the queen gave an account in her speech of how an insult had been offered to the British flag by the Chinese, at Canton, which had rendered it necessary for redress to be demanded by force of arms. The facts were these: A Chinese-built vessel, called "The Arrow," sailing under a British flag, had been boarded by a Chinese war-junk, and the crew carried off as pirates. Sir John Bowring, the English governor at Hong-Kong, had demanded satisfaction, which Yeh, the Chinese commissioner, had refused. Thereupon the English fleet, under Admiral Michael Seymour, was sent to enforce reparation as well as free admission of foreigners to the city of Canton. Had Sir John Bowring not been so determined that the port of Canton should, according to a former treaty, remain open to trade, the matter might have been settled without a fight; but, as it was, the Chinese were forced into a war which cost them dear.