Still, her Majesty did not regard the anxious events of the year with unmixed regret. It was a gratifying fact that the Indian Mutiny had been suppressed, and on the 14th of April the thanks of Parliament were voted to those who had saved our Indian Empire. The Queen, in conveying her personal thanks to Lord Canning, laid before him her project for founding the Order of the Star of India. A visit from her eldest daughter had brightened her birthday festivities--saddened though these were by the illness of the Duchess of Kent, who had been attacked by erysipelas. The Government had begun to strengthen the defences of the country, and the spontaneous uprising of the people, which originated the Volunteer Movement, placed at her disposal the nucleus of a superb defensive army, to the organisation of which the Prince Consort now began to direct his attention. Mr. Gladstone’s Budget, too, though it necessitated a ninepenny income-tax[53] to meet exceptional naval and military expenditure, was passed ungrudgingly by Parliament, though, of course, it increased the popular antipathy to the French Emperor which the Peace of Villafranca had excited. In vain did Napoleon III. endeavour to induce England to propose a Congress or a Conference for the purpose of settling the Italian Question in a manner that would allay Italian discontent. Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell would have fallen into this trap also, but for the tenacity with which the Queen urged her objections to their policy. Walewski fortunately admitted to Lord Cowley that the French and Austrian Emperors had agreed not to submit the Peace they had made to a Congress. “Two emperors,” wrote the Queen to Lord John Russell (20th July), “who were at war with each other have suddenly concluded personally a peace, and we have before us merely the account of one of them through his Minister. This Minister’s account admits that his master pledged his word on certain points, but thinks it not binding if England will propose its being broken. This is a duty which honour forbids us to undertake.” The Cabinet then so far yielded to the Queen’s reasoning that they agreed to hold aloof from the whole business, till the arrangement between the two Emperors was embodied in the Treaty of Zurich. A debate in the House of Commons (8th August) showed that Parliament, on the whole, approved of this course. On the 13th came the prorogation of the Legislature, which enabled the Queen and her husband to make a short excursion to the Channel Islands. [Illustration: ST. GEORGE’S HALL, WINDSOR CASTLE.]