In the course of a very hot June, the Queen and the Prince went to Warwickshire, which she had known as a young girl, in order to pay a special visit to Birmingham. They were the guests for two nights of Lord and Lady Leigh, at Stoneleigh. Her Majesty had the privilege of seeing Birmingham without a particle of smoke, while a mighty multitude of orderly craftsmen, with their wives and children, stood many hours patiently under the blazing sun, admiring their banners and flags, and cheering lustily for their Queen. One of the objects of the visit was that her Majesty might open a people's museum and park at Aston for the dwellers in the Black country. The royal party drove next day to one of the finest old feudal castles in England--Warwick Castle, with its noble screen of woods, mirroring itself in the Avon-- and were entertained at luncheon by Lord and Lady Warwick. In the evening, in the middle of a violent thunderstorm, the Queen and the Prince returned to Buckingham Palace. This season as usual, there was a visit from the King of the Belgians and several of his family. The first Atlantic cable was laid, and lasted just long enough for the exchange of messages of proud congratulation on the wonderful annihilation of distance between Europe and America, so far as the thoughts of men were concerned. After a month's stay at Osborne, during one of the warmest Julys ever known in this country, when the condition of the river Thames threatened to drive the Parliament from Westminster, the Queen and the Prince Consort, with the Prince of Wales and their suites, paid a state visit to Cherbourg. The great fort was nearly completed, and the harbour was full of French war-vessels as her Majesty steamed in, on the evening of the 4th of August, receiving such a salute from the ships and the fortress itself as seemed to shake earth and sky. The Emperor and Empress, who arrived the same day, came on board at eight o'clock, and were cordially received by the Queen and the Prince, though the relations between France and England were not quite so assured as when their soldiers were brothers-in-arms in the Crimea. After the visitors left, the Queen's journal records that she went below and read, and nearly finished "that most interesting book 'Jane Eyre.'"