the 31st, from whence the Queen went on to Portsmouth, and thence to Osborne, where they found Prince Alfred, who had passed his examination--especially the mathematical part of it--with great distinction, eager to tell them he had been appointed to the _Euryalus_. He was waiting for his mother, writes the Queen, “in his middie’s jacket, cap, and dirk, half-blushing, and looking very happy. He is a little pulled down from these three days’ hard examination, which only terminated to-day.... We felt very proud, for it is a particularly hard examination.”[34] [Illustration: POTSDAM.] Only one anxiety had intruded itself during the Prussian tour--the issue of the Queen’s Proclamation to the Indian people on assuming the government of India. She objected strongly to the draft of it which was submitted to her, and begged Lord Derby to write one out for her in “his own excellent language,” keeping in view “that it is a female Sovereign who speaks to more than a hundred millions of Eastern people on assuming the direct government over them after a bloody civil war, giving them pledges which her future reign is to redeem.” Such a Proclamation should, says her Majesty, emphasise the ideas of generosity, benevolence, religious toleration, liberty, and equality before the law. What offended her deeply in the draft was a menace reminding the Indian people that she had “the power of undermining” native religions and customs. Her Majesty, writes Lord Malmesbury by her directions, “would prefer that the subject should be introduced by a declaration in the sense that the deep attachment which her Majesty feels to her own religion, and the comfort and happiness which she derives from its consolations, will preclude her from any attempt to interfere with native religions.” The name of the official personage who drew up this blundering and exasperating Proclamation, which the Queen had the good sense and good taste to cancel, need not be mentioned. It is but just to Lord Derby to say that when the Queen’s objections were telegraphed to him he examined the document, and so completely agreed with her Majesty that he re-wrote the Proclamation in a manner that anticipated her detailed instructions. A few additions were made to it by the Queen, and when it was issued it was hailed with delight by the Natives as the Magna Charta of India. [Illustration: THE QUEEN LEAVING THE TOWN HALL, LEEDS.]