subject of a public statement was not again mooted. Her Majesty was content to wait until the story I should have to tell in the Prince's Life should fully open the eyes of her people to the truth. Complaints ceased for a time, but during the year 1870 they were renewed in some of the leading journals, and again the Queen felt deeply wounded--how deeply will presently appear. In the autumn of 1871 she had a serious illness, which occasioned general alarm, and the journals teemed with expressions of the devotion and the sympathetic interest which lay at the heart of all Her Majesty's subjects. To this change is due the following letter:-- "BALMORAL, _Septr. 17, 1871_. "Long, long has the Queen wished to write to Mr Martin, but her _very severe_ illness has prevented her from doing so. She is now, however, going on so satisfactorily, _though very slowly_, that she is glad to be able to thank him for his kind inquiries and letters. "The Queen cannot help referring to the articles in Thursday's _Times_, and in Friday's _Daily News_, which are very gratifying, as these go the length of expressing _remorse_ at the heartless, cruel way in which they had attacked the Queen. Mr Martin wrote rightly, that the words were not spoken which were needed to make the public understand that the Queen could not do more than human strength could bear.[5] Mr Martin will recollect the Queen's distress for some years past, and how little she was _believed_. The unjust attacks this year, the great worry and anxiety and hard work for ten years, alone, unaided, with increasing age and never very strong health, broke the Queen down, and almost drove her to despair. The result has been the very, very serious illness--the severest, except one (a typhoid fever in 1835), she ever had--and more suffering than she has ever endured in her life. Now that people are frightened and kind, the Queen will be kindly treated in future; but it is very hard that it was necessary she should have the severe illness and great suffering, which has left her very weak, to make people feel for and understand her.... The sympathy in dear Scotland has been great, and their press was the first to raise their voice in defence of a cruelly misunderstood woman. She will never forget this." After this time Her Majesty had no reason, so far as I know, to complain that she was "cruelly misunderstood" by any section of her people. They learned to understand and to sympathise with her, for they saw day by day how close a watch she kept upon all public affairs, how full her thoughts were of them and their wellbeing, and how tender were her sympathies with all of them who were "in danger, necessity, or tribulation."