The story goes on, that after a little laughter at the anachronism, Her Majesty took some trouble to explain to the malcontent that he was wrong, she did not kill Queen Mary, she had been very sorry for her fate. So far from killing her, she, Queen Victoria, was one of Queen Mary's descendants, and it was because she came of the old Stewart line that she reigned over both England and Scotland. CHAPTER XIX. ROYAL VISITORS.--THE BIRTH OP PRINCE ALFRED.--A NORTHERN RETREAT. The year 1844 may be instanced as rich in royal visitors to England. On the 1st of June the King of Saxony arrived and shortly after him a greater lion, the Emperor of Russia. The King of Saxony came as an honest friend and sightseer, entering heartily into the obligations of the latter. There was more doubt as to the motives of the Czar of all the Russias, and considerable wariness was needed in dealing with the northern eagle, whose real object might be, if not to use his beak and claws on the English nation, to employ them on some other nation after he had got an assurance that England would not interfere with his game. Indeed, jealousy of the French, and of the friendship between the Queen and Louis Philippe, was at the bottom of the Emperor's sudden appearance on the scene. The Emperor had paid England a previous visit so far back as 1816, in the days of George, Prince Regent, when Prince Leopold and Princess Charlotte were the young couple at Claremont. He had then won much admiration and popularity by his strikingly handsome person, stately politeness, and gallant devotion to the English ladies who caught his fancy. He was still a handsome man--over six feet, with regular features, remarkable eyes, and bushy moustaches. He wore on his arrival a cloth cloak lined with costly fur, and a kind of cap which looked like a turban--rather a telling costume. But time and the man's life and character had stamped themselves on what had once been a goodly mould. There was something oppressive in his elaborate politeness. There was a glare, not far removed from ferocity, in the great grey eyes, so little shaded by their lids and light eyelashes that occasionally a portion of the white eyeball above the iris was revealed, and there was an intangible brooding melancholy about the autocrat whose will was still law to millions of his fellow-creatures. The Queen received her distinguished guest in the great hall at Buckingham Palace Shortly afterwards there was a _dejeuner_, at which some of the Emperor's old acquaintances in the royal family and out of it, met him--the Duchess of Gloucester, the Princess Sophia, the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Wellington, &c. &c. In the evening there was a banquet.