The year 1876 was marked, in addition to King Edward’s return from India, by a curious example of His Majesty’s tact and courage. He consented to preside at the special Jubilee Festival of the Licensed Victuallers’ Asylum, and this action aroused an extraordinary amount of feeling in temperance circles. Before the day of the festival he had received more than 200 petitions from all over the kingdom begging him to withdraw his consent. His Majesty, however, attended the festival, and in his speech pointedly referred to his critics, observing that he was there, not to encourage the consumption of alcoholic liquors, but to support an excellent charity, which had enjoyed the patronage of his honoured father. It is interesting to note the manner in which King Edward always refers to his father, with whom he undoubtedly has far more in common than is generally supposed. Perhaps the most conspicuous taste shared by the father and the son is a really keen and personal interest in exhibitions of all kinds. This was probably first realised by those about him twenty years ago, when the King accepted the onerous duties of Executive President of the British Commission of the Paris Exhibition of 1878. He threw himself with ardour into this work almost immediately after his return from India, and during a short visit which he paid to France in that spring he received a considerable number of official personages connected with the approaching exhibition. The King, accompanied by Queen Alexandra, unveiled in the following July a statue of Alfred the Great at Wantage, the birthplace of the famous King. The statue was the gift of Colonel Lloyd-Lindsay (afterwards Lord Wantage), the sculptor being Count Gleichen (Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg). King Edward is a lineal descendant of King Alfred by the intermarriage of the Saxon with the Norman reigning houses in the eleventh century, and it was most appropriate that he should have been invited to perform the ceremony. In January 1878 King Edward, accompanied by Prince Louis Napoleon, visited the late Duke of Hamilton at Hamilton Palace, in Lanarkshire. The Crown Prince of Austria was also a guest of the Duke at the time. The King greatly enjoyed this visit to the premier Peer of Scotland, who is of the ancient lineage of Scottish Royalty. The Royal visitors enjoyed some excellent sport in the historic Cadzow Forest--_Cadyow_ having been granted by King Robert the Bruce after the battle of Bannockburn to Sir Gilbert Hamilton, the ancestor of the present Duke. Here still remain the few old oaks of the once great Caledonian Forest, immortalised by Sir Walter Scott in his ballad of “Cadyow Castle”; and here are also the wild white bulls of the same breed as preserved at Chillingham, and the famous Cadzow herd of wild cattle.