The sweetest days of summer were clouded for the Queen in 1849 by painful memories of the shock she received on the 19th of May. On that day an Irishman named Hamilton, with a morbid craving for notoriety, tried to shoot her when she was driving with her children in her carriage down Constitution Hill. Her Majesty, with great tact, engaged the attention of her little ones by conversation, and with a sign directed her coachman to drive on as if nothing had happened, so that her husband, who was riding in advance, knew nothing of the affair--not even of the attempt of the mob to “lynch” Hamilton. His pistol was loaded with blank cartridge, but in spite of that he was sentenced to seven years’ transportation. It has been said that Ireland, exhausted by the abortive rebellion of 1848, had been settling down into sullen tranquillity. There were many signs visible of a better feeling towards the Government in the country. The Queen accordingly suggested that it might be well to take advantage of the improving condition of things, and pay a Royal visit to Ireland. Her Majesty, however, primarily desired that the Irish people should benefit, and not be burdened, by the presence of Royalty. She therefore expressed a wish that the visit should not be made in such a form as to put the country, which had suffered so much from distress, to any great expense. Prince Albert, ever practical, suggested that in that case the best way of carrying out the Queen’s idea was to make this visit a simple yachting cruise. The Queen, he said, might call at the ports of Cork, Waterford, Wexford, Dublin, and Belfast on her annual journey to the North of Scotland, and perchance touch at Glasgow, thereby compensating it for the loss of the Royal visit in 1847. Lord Clarendon fully endorsed the views of the Queen and her husband in a letter to Lord John Russell. “Everything,” he wrote, “tends to secure for the Queen an enthusiastic reception, and the one drawback, which is the general distress of all classes, has its advantage, for it will enable the Queen to do what is kind and considerate to those who are suffering.”