The Rev. Norman McLeod has left a record of the widowed Queen's first visit to Balmoral. It seems he thought she was too unreconciled to her loss, and felt it his duty to preach what he believed to be "truth in God's sight, and that which I believe she needed," he said, "though I felt it would be very trying for her to receive it." She did receive it very sweetly, and wrote him "a kind, tender letter of thanks for it," She afterwards summoned him to the castle, and to her own room. He writes: "She was alone. She met me with an unutterably sad expression, which filled my eyes with tears, and at once began to speak about the Prince. ... She spoke of his excellencies--his love, his cheerfulness; how he was everything to her. She said she never shut her eyes to trials, but liked to look them in the face; how she would never shrink from duty, but that all was at present done mechanically; that her highest ideas of purity and love were obtained from him, and that God could not be displeased with her love." No, we cannot love enough to displease the God of love, who is not, whatever men may preach, a "jealous God," in that small way; but perhaps we may grieve too much to please the Master of Life, of which, in His eyes, what we call death, is the immortal blossom and crowning. It seems to me that in her loving tribute to the Prince, the Queen was a little unjust to her mother, to whose precepts and example she owed very high "ideas of purity" and that strong sense of duty, and that fortitude, essentially a womanly, not a manly, virtue, which preserved her through the temptations of a glad and splendid youth--through the trials and sorrows of maturer years, and which, when that time of bitterest trial came, braced up her shattered forces, and held together her broken heart. Balmoral--the dear mountain-home, so entirely her husband's creation--now became more than ever dear to the Queen, and has never lost its charm for her. Her life there has been, from the first, almost pastoral in its simplicity. The Highlanders about them, a primitive, but very proud people, regarded their Sovereign and her husband with no servile awe. With them, even respect begins, like charity, at home; what there is left, they give loyally to their superiors in rank. To the Queen and her family they have given more,--love and free-hearted devotion. Her Majesty has always gone about among the poorer tenants of the estate, like any laird's wife, in an unpretending, neighborly way; and they, thanks to their good Scotch sense and Highland pride, never take advantage of the uncondescending condescension, to offend her by too great familiarity, or shock her by servility. Taking up her "Journal," I have chanced upon an account given by Her Majesty of a round of visits to the cottages of certain "poor old women," and here is an entry or two: