The King’s relations with the Emperor of Russia had always been of the most friendly and even affectionate character. As Tsarevitch the Emperor paid a visit to Sandringham, and the near relationship to Queen Alexandra had been kept very much alive by those family parties in Denmark at which King Christian’s sons and daughters with their husbands and children were wont to keep up a patriarchal kinship. No family was ever united by stronger ties of love and affection than that of the Danish King and Queen, and those bonds were never allowed to slacken. It was only natural therefore that our King and Queen should wish to pay a visit to their nephew in his own country. St. Petersburg was then not in such a condition politically as to warrant their going there, so the meeting took place at Reval in the month of June. The visit was purely dictated by family affection, and there was not the most distant suspicion of politics attached to it. There were, however, a few—happily very few—ill-conditioned members of Parliament who chose to assume that the King, by going to Reval, was more or less giving a sign of approval to the severity with which rebels were said to be treated in Russia, a severity, by the by, which has since been shown to have been greatly exaggerated. The professional agitator seldom allows himself to be hampered by accuracy. The German Press also took exception to this meeting, and held it up as evidence of a dark and sinister anti-Teuton plot. It is really amazing that the King should have been suspected of hatred against Germany. Nothing could be further from the truth, as I have good reason to know. The King delighted in his yearly visits to Germany; he loved the country where he had many friends, not to speak of his near relations; he delighted in his intercourse with them, which was greatly facilitated by his exceptional knowledge of their language, in which he took some pride in exercising his skill; and yet the newspaper writers, who in Germany seem to be a singularly ill-informed race, were never weary of girding at the King and proclaiming a hostility which was purely the invention of a mischief-making spite.