In the summer of 1860, Queen Victoria accepted the invitation of the President for the Prince of Wales to extend his Canadian tour to this country. The duty of preparing for the Prince’s reception devolved upon Miss Lane, and so admirably did she order the Executive household, that a party far less amiable than the Prince and the noble gentlemen who accompanied him, could not have failed to find their visit an agreeable one. Apart from the personal qualities of this distinguished guest (and Mr. Buchanan always spoke with enthusiasm of the admirable qualities and excellent disposition of his young friend), his visit was an occurrence of memorable interest, being the first occasion on which an heir apparent to the Crown of Great Britain had stood in the Capital of her lost colonies. Especially did this interest attach, when, standing uncovered by the side of the President, before the gateway of Washington’s tomb, and gazing reverently on the sarcophagus that holds his ashes, the great-grandson of George the Third paid open homage to the memory of the chief who rent his empire—when the last born king of William the Conqueror’s blood bowed his knee before the dust of the greatest rebel of all time. The modesty of the Prince’s behavior, and his perfectly frank manners attested the excellence of the training given him by his good mother and his high-souled, wise, and pious father. He entered with all the freshness of youth into every innocent amusement planned to beguile the hours of his stay. It may be well here to mention, as an instance of Mr. Buchanan’s care for the proprieties of his station, that, anxious as it was possible for man to be to gratify the Prince, who, on more than one occasion, proposed dancing, approving of it as a harmless pastime, and fond of it as a spectacle, he yet declined to permit it in the White House, for the reason that that building was not his private home, that it belonged to the nation, and that the moral sense of many good people who had assisted to put him there, would be shocked by what they regarded as profane gayety in the saloons of the State. The visit of the English party lasted five days, and they separated from Mr. Buchanan and Miss Lane leaving behind them most agreeable recollections. On the Prince’s arrival in England, the Queen acknowledged her sense of the cordiality of his reception by the President, in the following autograph letter, in which the dignity of an official communication is altogether lost in the personal language of a grateful mother thanking a friend for kindness done her firstborn child. It is the Queen’s English employed to express the sentiments of the woman: “WINDSOR CASTLE, _Nov. 19th, 1860_.