Nor was this the only occasion during the year on which the Queen manifested her vigilant interest in the lot of her poorer subjects. In July a wretched woman named Geneive had been forced by her husband to walk on a rotten tight rope, suspended thirty yards above the ground, at a Foresters’ Fête in Aston Park, Birmingham. The rope broke, and the poor creature, who was far advanced in pregnancy, was dashed to pieces in the most shocking manner. Yet the fête was continued, the Committee callously determining “to go on with the programme, omitting the dangerous parts.” On the 25th of July the Mayor of Birmingham was somewhat startled to receive from Sir C. B. Phipps a letter in the following terms:--“The Queen has commanded me to express to you the pain with which her Majesty has read the account of a fatal accident which has occurred during a fête at Aston Park, Birmingham. Her Majesty cannot refrain from making known through you her personal feelings of horror that one of her subjects--a female--should have been sacrificed to the gratification of the demoralising taste, unfortunately prevalent, for exhibitions attended with the greatest danger to the performers. Were any proof wanting that such exhibitions are demoralising, I am commanded to remark that it would be at once found in the decision arrived at to continue the festivities, the hilarity, and the sports of the occasion after an event so melancholy. The Queen trusts that you, in common with the rest of the townspeople of Birmingham, will use your influence to prevent in future the degradation to such exhibitions of the Park which was gladly opened by her Majesty and the beloved Prince Consort, in the hope that it would be made serviceable for the healthy exercise and rational recreation of the people.” The Mayor explained that when he became a patron of the fête he did not know that a dangerous exhibition was contemplated, and though Aston Park was outside his jurisdiction, he promised to use his influence to prevent such exhibitions from being held there in future. On the 11th of August the Queen left London for Antwerp, from which she proceeded to Laeken with the King of the Belgians. From Belgium she went on to Gotha, where she stayed at the Castle of Rosenau till the 7th of September. On the 8th of the month her Majesty journeyed to Kranichstein, near Darmstadt, and spent the day with the Princess Louis of [Illustration: THE QUEEN UNVEILING THE STATUE OF PRINCE ALBERT AT ABERDEEN.]