Her Majesty had gone to Balmoral for her birthday, and was still there on the 16th of June when she heard of the death of her valued friend, Dr. Norman Macleod. He had preached to her and dined with her so recently as the 26th of May. What his loss was to her she has expressed simply and forcibly in a passage in her journal.... "When I thought of my dear friend Dr. Macleod and all he had been to me--how in 1862, '63, '64, he had cheered and comforted and encouraged me--how he had ever sympathised with me ... and that this too like so many other comforts and helps was for ever gone, I burst out crying." On the 1st of July the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Leopold and the two younger princesses, visited the Albert Memorial, Hyde Park, which was complete save for the statue. Three days afterwards, in very hot weather, her Majesty was present at a great review at Aldershot. CHAPTER XXXIX. STAY AT HOLYROOD--DEATHS OF PRINCESS HOHENLOHE AND OF PRINCE FREDERICK OF DARMSTADT--MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH. The Queen arrived at Holyrood on the 14th of August, and made a stay of a few days in Edinburgh for the first time during eleven years. A suite of rooms called the "Argyle rooms" had been freshly arranged for her occupation. She went over Queen Mary's rooms again for the gratification of Princess Beatrice, and with the Princess and Prince Leopold took the old drives to Dalkeith and Leith which her Majesty had first taken thirty years before. A favourite project in the past had been that her Majesty should go so far north as to visit Dunrobin, and rooms had been prepared for her reception. When the visit was paid the castle was in the hands of another generation, and the Queen laid the foundation stone of a cross erected to the memory of the late Duchess. Soon after her Majesty's return to Balmoral, on the 23rd September, she had the grief to receive a telegram announcing the death of her sister, Princess Hohenlohe. Though not more than sixty-five years of age the Princess had been for some time very infirm. She had received a great shock in the previous spring from the unexpected death by fever, at the age of thirty-three, of her younger surviving daughter, Princess Feodore, the second wife of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. The Emperor Napoleon III, who had long been labouring under sore disease, laid down his wearied and vanquished life at Chislehurst on the 9th of January, 1873. The coming marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh to the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia was announced to Parliament. On the 2nd of April the Queen was present at the opening of the Victoria Park. Prince Arthur was created Duke of Connaught.