A fatal accident to the younger son of Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse happened at Darmstadt on the 29th of May. The nurse had brought the children to see the Princess while she was in bed, and had left the two little boys playing beside her. The windows of the bedroom and of a dressing-room beyond were open. Princess Louis, hearing Prince Ernest, the elder brother, go into the dressing-room, leapt out of bed and hurried after him. In her momentary absence Prince Frederick, between two and three years of age, leant out of one of the bedroom windows, lost his balance, and fell on the pavement below, receiving terrible injuries, from which he died in a few hours, to the great sorrow of his parents. In September the Queen and Princess Beatrice, with Lady Churchill and General Ponsonby, spent a week at Inverlochy, occupying the house of Lord Abinger at the foot of Ben Nevis, among the beautiful scenery which borders the Caledonian Canal, and is specially associated with Prince Charlie--in pity for whom her Majesty loved to recall the drops of Stewart blood in her veins. This year more than one figure, well-known in different ways to the Queen in former years, passed out of mortal sight--Bishop Wilberforce, Landseer, Macready. In January, 1874, the Duke of Edinburgh was married at the Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, to the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia. The Duke was in his thirtieth, the Grand Duchess in her twenty-first year. The royal couple arrived at Gravesend on March 7th, and entered London on March 12th in a heavy snowstorm. In spite of the weather the Queen and the Duchess, with the Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Beatrice seated opposite, drove slowly through the crowded streets in an open carriage drawn by six horses. The Prince and Princess of Wales, Princess Louise, &c., were at the windows of Buckingham Palace. The Queen went out with the Duke and Duchess on the balcony. The Duke and Duchess's town and country houses are Clarence House and Eastwell Park. In March her Majesty, accompanied by all her family in England, reviewed the troops returned from the Ashantee War in Windsor Great Park, and gave the orders of St. Michael and St. George to Sir Garnet Wolseley and the Victoria Cross to Lord Gifford. The first volume of the "Life of the Prince Consort," by Sir Theodore Martin, came out and made a deep impression on the general public. Her Majesty had for many years honoured with her friendship M. and Madame Van de Weyer, who were the Queen's near neighbours at Windsor, the family living at the New Lodge. In addition they had come for several seasons to Abergeldie, when the Court was at Balmoral. M. Van de Weyer was not only the trusted representative of the King of the Belgians, he was a man highly gifted morally and intellectually. This year the friendship was broken by his death. On the 15th of October the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh's son--was born. The news of Livingstone's death reached England.