MADAM--The loving care ever shown by your Majesty for the welfare of your subjects, together with the benevolent interest which your Majesty and your Royal Consort are so well known to take in works of mercy, have emboldened me most humbly to pray for the gracious condescension of your Majesty and your Royal Consort towards an undertaking for employing the blind which has been carried on during the past year and a half, on so limited a scale that but very few have derived benefit from it. Being myself blind, I have been led to take a deep interest in the blind, of whom there are stated to be twenty-seven thousand in Great Britain and Ireland, out of which number but a small proportion can be received into the existing institutions, on leaving which many even of this number are reduced to beggary from the difficulty they find in obtaining employment. Could the endeavour to remedy this evil become truly national, the condition of the blind, as a class, would, with the blessing of God, be materially raised and improved, and this nothing could so effectually ensure as the sanction and gracious patronage of your Majesty and of your Royal Consort. The plan of the undertaking for which I have ventured humbly to plead with your most gracious Majesty, is to ensure to the blind workman a fixed sum weekly, in remuneration for his labour; and also to teach those too old for admission into institutions, some trade. Should your Majesty be pleased of your gracious condescension to grant this request, the hearts of your Majesty's blind subjects will be ever bound to your Majesty in love and gratitude.--Your Majesty's most dutiful, loyal, devoted, humble servant, E. M. GILBERT. Perhaps at this point one may venture to call attention to the fact that a person born blind or blind in early life can seldom spell quite correctly. The training of the eye tells for much in the English language, and the unaided memory cannot be relied upon. Bessie's autograph letters are rarely free from defects; and the letter here copied may have been discarded when it was found on supervision to contain _admition_ for admission, _Concert_ for Consort, and one or two other trifling inaccuracies. Some of her intuitions in spelling--only think in how many cases a blind person's spelling must be intuitive--are delightful. She gives instruction for a letter to be written to the Rector of Marlbourne, our old friend Marylebone, and speaks of a statement she remembers in De Feau. The autograph letter to the Queen was duly corrected, no doubt, and despatched. It elicited the following reply from Colonel Phipps: TO MISS GILBERT. WINDSOR CASTLE, _15th January 1856_.