A still more welcome surprise to Her Majesty was a miniature of Prince Albert in armour, according to a fancy of the Queen's, by Thorburn, a likeness which proved the best of all the portraits taken of the Prince, the most successful in catching the outward look when it expressed most characteristically the man within. This picture, together with that of the angels holding a medallion bearing the inscription "_Heil und segen_" (Health and Blessing), and all the other presents were placed in a room "turned into a bower by dint of enormous garlands." The Queen and the Prince's relations with artists were naturally, from the royal couple's artistic tastes, intimate and happy. Accordingly, many pictures not only of great personages in State ceremonies, but of family groups in the simplicity of domestic life, survive as a proof of the connection. Vandyck did not paint Charles I. and Henrietta Maria more frequently than Landseer and some of his contemporaries painted her Majesty, with her husband and children, in the bright and unclouded summer of her life; and Vandyck, never painted his royal patrons in such easy unaffected guise and everyday circumstances. There is such a picture of Landseer's, well known from engravings, in which the Prince is represented in a Highland dress returned late from shooting, seated, surrounded by the trophies of his sport in deer, blackcock, &c. &c., and by a whole colony of delighted dogs,--beautiful Eos conspicuous by her sobriety and reserve, while an enraptured terrier presses forward to lick his master's hand. The Queen, dressed for dinner and still girlish-looking in her white satin, stands talking to the Prince. The Princess Royal, a chubby child of two or three, is prowling childlike among the dead game, curiously making her investigations. Of many stories told of royal visits to studios, there are two which refer to an _enfant terrible_, the baby son of one of the painters. This small man having undertaken to be cicerone to his father's work, sought specially to point out to her Majesty that two elves were likenesses of himself and a little brother, "only, you know, we don't go about without clothes at home," he volunteered the confidential explanation. The same child horrified an attentive audience by declining to receive a gracious advance made to him by the Queen, asserting with the utmost candour, "I don't like you." "But why don't you like me, my boy?" inquired the loving mother of other little children, in some bewilderment. "Because you are the Queen of England and you killed Queen Mary," the ardent champion of the slain Queen answered boldly.