The Kaiser's marriage forms the theme of some jocular and negligible lines: too little then was known of his character and temperament to expect any illuminating comment on the event. But a good deal of space is devoted to the Empress of Austria's hunting visits to Ireland and England--a vivid contrast to the dreary experiences chronicled in the _Court Journal_ quoted above. Hunting in Meath had been boycotted in the winter of 1881, and the Empress returned to her quarters at Combermere Abbey in Cheshire. _Punch_ appeals to the Irish to wipe out the stain and revert to the chivalry of the Irish Brigade, while he welcomed the Empress to England. In the following year the attempt on the Queen's life by a lunatic, and the intervention of the Eton boy who punched the lunatic's head, are duly chronicled. In one of the worst of his ceremonial cartoons _Punch_ is seen on bended knee presenting a letter of congratulation from her loving People to the Queen and Princess Beatrice. Even the great Tenniel could not always give dignified expression to a genuine and general sentiment. No criticism, however, can be offered on _Punch's_ approval of the Queen's courage in appearing in public, shortly after this incident, to open Epping Forest. The verses on the marriage of the Duke of Albany in 1882 alluded to him as "the latest, youngest, not least wise" of Royal Princes, and the worthy inheritor of the Prince Consort's studious tastes. The accompanying cartoon shows the Duke with the Duchess behind him on a pillion, riding to Claremont. In the autumn of the same year his delicate health aroused public uneasiness, and _Punch_ contrasts the formidable technical account of his symptoms in the _Lancet_ with the reassuring statements of the _Morning Post_.