No doubt the snowflakes, in corries on the mountain-side, do look deliciously cool on a hot summer day. But such a drizzling rain as this was the other side of the picture, which her Majesty, with a shiver, called "cold, wet, and cheerless." In addition to the rain the wind began to blow a hurricane, which, after all, in the case of a fog was about the kindest thing the wind could do, whether or not the spirits of heroes were in the gale. At twenty minutes after two the party set out on their descent of the mountain. The two keepers, moving on as pioneers in the gloom, "looked like ghosts." When walking became too exhausting, the Queen, "well wrapped in plaids," was again mounted on her pony, which she declared "went delightfully," though the mist caused the rider "to feel cheerless." In the course of the next couple of hours, after a thousand feet of the descent had been achieved, by one of those abrupt transitions which belong to such a landscape, the mist below vanished as if by magic, and it was again, summer sunshine around. But the world could not be altogether shut out at Balmoral, and the echoes which came from afar, this year, were of a sufficiently disturbing character. Among the most notable, Sir Theodore Martin mentions the Frankfort riots, in which two members of the German States Union were assassinated, and the startling death of the Conservative leader, Lord George Bentinck, who had suddenly exchanged the _rôle_ of the turf for that of Parliament, and come to the front during the struggle over the abolition of the Corn Laws. A third strangely significant omen was the election of Prince Louis Napoleon, by five different French Departments, as a deputy to the new French Chamber.