On the 25th of January the Marquis of Hertford, one of the ornaments of the Queen’s Court in her happier days, passed away from the scene. Lord Hertford had distinguished himself as an ideal Lord Chamberlain from 1874 to 1879, and he had won the confidence of her Majesty whilst serving as Equerry to the Prince Consort. This, he used to say, was the most interesting part of his career, and among his friends he occasionally told many curious stories, brightly illustrative of Court life in the Victorian period. He had a profound and warm regard for the Prince Consort, who talked more freely to him than to most men, chiefly, he said, because he knew his Equerry kept no diary. Lord Hertford’s stories all tended to throw light on the singularly unselfish nature of his Royal master. One of them, for example, was to the effect that when the Queen and the Prince were crossing the Solent, Lord Hertford, on appearing on deck, found the Prince pacing about and enjoying the fresh breeze, whereas the Queen had been compelled to retire to her cabin. He said to the Prince he was surprised to find him on deck in such a breeze, as he had always heard that his Royal Highness was a bad sailor. The Prince replied, “I know people say that about me, and imagine that the Queen never suffers from sea-sickness. It is better it should be so. The English laugh so much at sea-sickness, that I prefer the laugh should be against me rather than against the Queen.” In the second week in February the Queen published a continuation of her “Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands,” the dedication of which was in these words:--“To my loyal Highlanders, and especially to the memory of my devoted personal attendant and faithful friend, John Brown, these records of my widowed life in Scotland are gratefully dedicated.”[200] In this volume she displayed much of the latent Jacobitism which one is apt to develop in the atmosphere of the northern mountains, and again and again, when she records her visits to the scenes, rich in the storied memories of “the ’15 and the ’45,” she expresses her feeling of pride and gratitude that she has inherited, not only the throne of the Stuarts, but the fervent loyalty that bound so many gallant hearts to the cause of “bonnie Prince Charlie.” Her reminiscences are somewhat tinged with melancholy, but the great and motherly loving-heartedness of the book is its chief charm, and secured for it an amazing popularity. It was said that the circulating libraries ordered copies by the ton, and the Press teemed with favourable reviews, in which her Majesty took great interest. As usual, however, she only read those that were marked for her perusal by her ladies. The cover was designed by the Princess Beatrice, and was in every way tasteful and artistic. But the portraits which embellished the work were badly reproduced. That of Brown, however, it may be noted, was an exception, for he was “flattered” by the artist out of all recognition.