Belvoir was a sight in itself, even after the stately lawns of Chatsworth. "I do not know whether you ever saw Belvoir," writes Fanny Kemble; "it is a beautiful place; the situation is noble, and the views, from the windows of the castle, and the terraces and gardens hanging over the steep hill crowned by it, is charming. The whole vale of Belvoir, and miles of meadow and woodland, lie stretched below it, like a map unrolled to the distant horizon, presenting extensive and varied prospects in every direction; while from the glen which surrounds the castle-hill, like a deep moat filled with a forest, the spring winds swell up as from a sea of woodland, and the snatches of birds' carolling, and cawing rooks' discourse, float up to one from the topmost branches of tall trees, far below one's feet, as one stands on the battlemented terraces." December was not the best time for seeing some of the attractions of Belvoir; but Lady Bloomfield has written of her Majesty's proverbial good fortune in these excursions: "The Queen yachts during the equinox, and has the sea a dead calm; visits about in the dead of winter, and has summer weather." There were other respects in which Belvoir was in its glory in midwinter--it belonged to a hunting neighbourhood and a hunting society. Whereas at Drayton and Chatsworth the royal pair had been principally surrounded by Tory and Whig statesmen, at Belvoir, while the Queen-dowager and some of the most distinguished members of the company at Chatsworth were again of the party, the Queen and the Prince found themselves in the centre of the fox-hunters of Melton Mowbray. Happily, the Prince could hunt with the best, and the Queen liked to look on at her husband's sport, so that the order of the day was the throwing off of the hounds at Croxton. In the evening the Queen played whist. The next day there was a second splendid meet royally attended, with cards again at night. The Prince wrote of one of these "runs," to Baron Stockmar, that he had distinguished himself by keeping up with the hounds all through. "Anson" and "Bouverie" had both fallen on his left and right, but he had come off "with a whole skin." We are also told that the Prince's horsemanship excited the amazed admiration of the spectators, to the Queen's half-impatient amusement. "One can scarcely credit the absurdity of the people," she wrote to her uncle, King Leopold; "but Albert's riding so boldly has made such a sensation that it has been written all over the country, and they make much more of it than if he had done some great act." Apparently the Melton Mowbray fox-hunters had, till now, hardly appreciated that fine combination of physical and mental qualities, which is best expressed in two lines of an old song:-- His step is foremost in the ha', His sword in battle keen. On the 7th of December the visitors left for Windsor, passing through endless triumphal arches on the road, greeted at Leicester by seven thousand school children.