The season of 1868 was one of the hottest that had ever been experienced, and the Queen has all through life suffered so much from sultry weather, that in summer she has to do most of her work in the open air under the shade of a verandah or a tent. The heat, together with the worry of Ministerial crises, again broke down her nerves and brought on fainting fits, which alarmed her physicians. When Parliament was prorogued they urged her to go to Switzerland, and on the 6th of August she reached the Lake of Lucerne, travelling privately under the title of the Countess of Kent. Writing on the 10th of August to the Queen, the Princess Louis of Hesse says:--“I have just received your letter from Lucerne, and hasten to thank you for it. How glad I am that you admire the beautiful scenery, and that I know it, and can share your admiration and enjoyment of it in thought with you.” Her Majesty and her companions--the Princess Louise, Prince Arthur, and Lord Stanley--went up the Righi and Mount Pilatus, and made a short stay on the Furka Pass. “How, too, delightful,” writes the Princess Louis of Hesse, “your expeditions must have been! I do rejoice that, through the change of weather, you should have been able to see and enjoy all that glorious scenery. Without your good ponies, Brown, &c., you would have felt how difficult such ascents are for common mortals, particularly when the horses slip, and finally sit down. I am sure all this will have done you good; seeing such totally new beautiful scenery does refresh so immensely, and the air and exertion--both of which you bear so well now--will do your health good.” She returned to England on the 11th of September, having broken her journey at Paris, where she stayed with Lord Lyons at the British Embassy. “I am so grieved,” writes the Princess Louis, “that you should have been so unwell on the journey home. Dear, beautiful Scotland will do you good.” But the return to Balmoral was not a return to rest. The preparation for the General Election involved much harassing business, and Mr. Disraeli, Minister in attendance, was not always in the sweetest humour. On a great many points he found the Queen rather more difficult to “educate” than his Party. This gave a tone of acerbity to many of his communications written at the time, which was quite foreign to his character. In a letter, dated Balmoral Castle, 28th September, written to Bishop Wilberforce, Mr. Disraeli, while scolding some High Churchmen for following Dr. Hook, Dean of Chichester, whom he terms a “provincial Laud,” because he intrigued with the Party of Disestablishment, apologises for not having sent it sooner. “I have delayed writing to you,” he says, “several days because I wanted to get a quiet half-hour; and there is not a sentence in this in which I have not been interrupted. Carrying on the government of a country six hundred miles from the metropolis doubles the labour. The stream of telegrams and