In September 1848 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert established themselves with their six children at Balmoral, and Her Majesty records her first impressions of the place which was to be for so many years her much-loved Northern home. After describing her own and Prince Albert’s rooms, she says, “Opposite, down a few steps, are the children’s and Miss Hildyard’s three rooms.” Only a few days later we hear of the little Prince of Wales going out with his parents for a “drive” in the Balloch Buie. “We then mounted our ponies, Bertie riding Grant’s pony on the deer-saddle, and being led by a gillie, Grant walking by his side.” Grant, it should be explained, was head keeper, and much trusted by the Queen and Prince Albert, and for him was built a pretty lodge called Croft, a mile from Balmoral. “We scrambled up an almost perpendicular place to where there was a little _box_, made of hurdles and interwoven with branches of fir and heather, about five feet in height. There we seated ourselves with Bertie.” It can readily be imagined with what excitement the little Prince waited for nearly an hour till his father obtained a shot. The Queen records how her son helped her over the rough ground until they all gathered round the magnificent “Royal” which had fallen to Prince Albert’s gun. The life at Balmoral was as far as possible shorn of Royal state, and was much the same, no doubt, as that which was led under many another hospitable roof-tree in the country round about. Queen Victoria devoted herself to her husband and children. Thus she records, on 11th September 1849, “The morning was very fine. I heard the children repeat some poetry in German.” The life at Windsor Castle was scarcely less simple. Writing to an intimate friend, the late Duchess of Teck thus describes a dramatic performance at the Castle in January 1849, in which King Edward appeared, in spite of an accident which he had had a few days before:--