Frogmore had been much frequented by Queen Charlotte and her daughters, and was the place where they held many of their family festivals. It had been the country house of Princess Augusta for more than twenty years. On her death it was given to the Duchess of Kent. It is an unpretending white country house, spacious enough, and with all the taste of the day when it was built expended on the grounds, which does not prevent them from lying very low, with the inevitable sheet of water almost beneath the windows. Yet it is a lovely, bowery, dwelling when spring buds are bursting and the birds are filling the air with music; such a sheltered, peaceful, home-like house as an ageing woman well might crave. On it still lingers, in spite of a period when it passed into younger hands, the stamp of the old Duchess, with her simple state, her unaffected dignity, her affectionate interest in her numerous kindred. The place is but a bowshot from the old grey castle of Windsor. It was a chosen resort of the royal children, to whom the noble, kind, grandame was all that gracious age can be. Here the Queen brought the most distinguished of her guests to present them to her mother, who had known so many of the great men of her time. Here the royal daughter herself came often, leaving behind her the toils of government and the ceremonies of rank, where she could always be at ease, was always more than welcome. Here she comes still, after twenty years, to view old scenes--the chair by which she sat when the Duchess of Kent occupied it, the piano she knew so well, the familiar portraits, the old-fashioned furniture, suiting the house admirably, the drooping trees on the lawn, under which the Queen would breakfast in fine weather, according to an old Kensington --an old German--custom. The long verandah was wont to contain vases of flowers and statues of the Duchess's grandchildren, and formed a pleasant promenade for an old lady. Within the smaller, cosier rooms, with the softly tinted pink walls covered with portraits, was led the daily life which as it advanced in infirmity necessarily narrowed in compass, while the State rooms remained for family and Court gatherings. The last use made of the great drawing-room by its venerable mistress was after her death, when she lay in state there. Half-length portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Kent are in the place usually occupied by the likenesses of the master and mistress of the house. Among the other pictures are full-length portraits of the Queen and Prince Albert in their youth, taken soon after their marriage-- like the natural good end to the various pictures of her Majesty in her fair English childhood and maidenhood, with the blonde hair clustering about the open innocent forehead, the fearless blue eyes, the frank mouth. The child, long a widow in her turn, a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, must look with strange mingled feelings on these shadows of her early, unconscious self.