On the 5th of July her Majesty, whose health required change of air and scene, left for Switzerland, which must have possessed a great attraction to so ardent an admirer of mountain scenery. She went incognito as Countess of Kent. She was accompanied by Prince Leopold and the Princesses Louise and Beatrice. The Queen travelled in her yacht to Cherbourg, and thence by railway to Paris, where she stayed all day in seclusion in the house of the English Ambassador, receiving only a private visit from the Empress Eugénie--a different experience of Paris from the last. The Queen continued her journey in the evening to Basle, and from Basle to Lucerne, where for nearly two months she occupied the Pension Wallis, delightfully situated on the Hill Gibraltar above the lake. She made numerous enjoyable excursions on her pony "Sultan" to the top of the Rhigi, and in the little steamboat _Winkelried_ on the lovely lake of the Four Cantons, under the shadow of Pilatus, to William Tell's country--she even ventured as far as the desolate, snow-crowned precipices of the Engelberg. Her Majesty returned by Paris, driving out to St. Cloud, and being much affected as she walked in the grounds, but not venturing to enter the house, where she had lived with the Prince during her happy fortnight's visit to her ally in the Crimean war. Three days after her arrival in England the Queen proceeded as usual to Balmoral, where she took a lively interest in all the rural and domestic affairs which stood out prominently in the lives of her humbler neighbours. The passages from her journal in this and in subsequent years are full of graphic, appreciative descriptions of the stirring incidents of "sheep-juicing," "sheep-shearing," the torchlight procession on "Hallowe'en," a "house-warming;" of the grave solemnity of a Scotch communion, and the kindliness and pathos of more than one cottage "kirstenin," death-bed, and funeral, with the simple piteous tragedy of "a spate" in which two little brothers were drowned. Considerable excitement was caused in the House of Commons during the debate on the disestablishment of the Irish Church, by the Premier, Mr. Disraeli, mentioning the Queen's name in connection with an interview he had with her on his resignation of office and on the dissolution of Parliament. The conduct of Mr. Disraeli was stigmatised as unconstitutional both in advising a dissolution of Parliament and in apparently attempting to shift the responsibility of the situation from the Government to the Crown. The Queen lost by death this year her old Mistress of the Robes, one of the earliest and most attached of her friends, Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland. In September, 1869, her Majesty, with the Princesses Louise and Beatrice, paid a ten days' visit to Invertrosachs, occupying Lady Emily Macnaghten's house, and learning to know by heart Loch Katrine, Loch Lomond, &c., &c.