Manchester, “the Mayor and Corporation of which town,” writes the Queen, “had till now been too Radical to have robes.” Mr. Potter was duly knighted for his courtesy and kindness to the Royal party, and the Queen expressed herself as especially delighted with the order and good behaviour of the crowds who followed. She notes, however, in her Diary “that there are no really fine buildings” in Manchester--an observation which serves to mark the progress made by this now splendid city since 1851. Next day the Royal party left Worsley Hall, passed again through Manchester, and through Stockport, Crewe, Stafford, Rugby, Weedon, Wolverton, and Watford, where their carriages were found waiting for them ready to post to Windsor, which they reached at half-past seven in the evening. On the 14th of October the Queen paid her final visit to the Great Exhibition, and she records the fact that “an organ, accompanied by a fine and powerful brass instrument, the Sommerophone, was being played, and it nearly upset me.” The Sommerophone had a compass of five octaves, and [Illustration: THE QUEEN’S ARRIVAL IN PEEL PARK: CHILDREN OF THE MANCHESTER AND SALFORD SCHOOLS SINGING THE NATIONAL ANTHEM.] when played by its inventor, Herr Sommer--the only performer who could make it discourse music--was one of the marvels of a year singularly full of the marvellous. Next day the grand show was closed with somewhat scant ceremony, the Queen writing in her Diary, “How sad and strange to think that this great and bright time has passed away like a dream, after all its triumph and success.” It is curious to observe that in the contemporary expressions of public feeling which were prompted by the wind-up of the Exhibition, the same note of melancholy is sounded, as if there were abroad a half-conscious foreboding that the Festival of Peace was only too likely to be followed by War.