In August of this year the Queen and Prince sailed in their favorite yacht, the _Victoria and Albert_, for Ireland, taking with them their three eldest children, the better to show the Irish people that their sovereign had not lost confidence in them for their recent bit of a rebellion, which she believed was one-half Popery and the other half potato-rot. The Irish people justified that faith. At the Cove of Cork, where the Royal party first landed, and which has been Queenstown ever since, their reception was most enthusiastic, as it was also in Dublin, so lately disaffected. The common people were especially delighted with the children, and one "stout old woman" shouted out, "Oh, Queen, dear, make one o' thim darlints Patrick, and all Ireland will die for ye!" They afterwards got their "Patrick" in the little Duke of Connaught, but I fear were none the more disposed to die for the English Queen. Perhaps he came a little too late. The Queen on this trip expressed the intention of creating the Prince of Wales Earl of Dublin, by way of compliment and conciliation, and perhaps she did, but still Fenianism grew and flourished In Ireland. The passage from Belfast to Loch Ryan was very rough--a regular rebellion against, "the Queen of the Seas," as the Emperor of France afterwards called Victoria. She records that, "Poor little Affie was knocked down and sent rolling over the deck, and was completely drenched." The poor little fellow, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the bold mariner of the family, probably cried out then that he would "never, never be a sailor." In a letter from Balmoral, written on his thirtieth birthday, the Prince- Consort says: "Victoria is happy and cheerful--the children are well and grow apace; the Highlands are glorious." I do not know that the fact has anything to do with Her Majesty's peculiar love for Scotland, but she came very near being born in that part of her dominions--the Duke of Kent having proposed a little while before her birth to take a place in Lanarkshire, belonging to a friend. Had he done so his little daughter would have been a Highland lassie. I don't think the Queen would have objected. She said to Sir Archibald Alison, "I am more proud of my Scotch descent than of any other. When I first came into Scotland I felt as if I were coming home."