In the year 1861, what with public and private anxieties, the prince felt ill and feverish, and miserable. He passed his last birthday on a visit to Ireland, where the Prince of Wales was serving in the camp at the Curragh of Kildare. From Ireland, the Queen, the prince, Prince Alfred, and the Princesses Alice and Helena went to Balmoral; and there the prince enjoyed his favourite pastime of deer-stalking. On the return to Windsor in October, the Queen began to be anxious about her husband. One of the last letters of the prince was to his daughter the Crown Princess of Prussia, on her twenty-first birthday, and it shows the noble spirit which animated his whole career. 'May your life, which has begun beautifully, expand still further to the good of others and the contentment of your own mind! True inward happiness is to be sought only in the internal consciousness of effort systematically devoted to good and useful ends. Success, indeed, depends upon the blessing which the Most High sees meet to vouchsafe to our endeavours. May this success not fail you, and may your outward life leave you unhurt by the storms to which the sad heart so often looks forward with a shrinking dread.' In conversation with the Queen, he seemed to have a presentiment that he had not long to live. 'I do not cling to life; you do, but I set no store by it. If I knew that those I love were well cared for, I should be quite ready to die to-morrow.... I am sure, if I had a severe illness, I should give up at once. I should not struggle for life.' The fatigue and exposure which he underwent on a visit to Sandhurst to inspect the buildings for the Staff College and Royal Military Hospital, there is no doubt, injured his delicate health. Next Sunday he was full of rheumatic pains; he had already suffered greatly from rheumatism during the previous fortnight. One of his last services to his country was to write a memorandum in connection with the _Trent_ complications; which suggestions were adopted by British ministers and forwarded to the United States. He attended church on Sunday, 1st December, but looked very ill. Dr Jenner was sent for, and for the next few days he grew worse, with symptoms of gastric or low fever.