London was still dull and gloomy. Court mourning and the absence of the Prince of Wales (who was visiting his sister in Berlin) made the season of 1884 melancholy. On the 10th of May the Queen, the Grand Duke of Hesse, and the Princess Elizabeth paid a visit of condolence to the Duchess of Albany at Claremont, and on the 22nd her Majesty left Windsor for Balmoral. That she was much improved in health was evident, because not only were the public admitted to the railway-station at Perth, and Ferryhill, Aberdeen, but at the former she was able to walk from her carriage to the reception-room with a firm step and without assistance. It was a lovely warm day when her Majesty and suite drove along the north side of the Dee from Ballater to Balmoral. The sixty-fifth anniversary of her Majesty’s birthday was observed in London officially on the 24th of May, but Ministerial State dinners were not given owing to the Royal Family being in mourning. The anniversary was not to be kept at Balmoral, but at last the Queen directed that her servants, with those from Abergeldie and Birkhall, should dine in the Ball Room of the Castle, under the presidency of her Commissioner, Dr. Profeit. In the morning Mr. Boehm’s life-size statue of John Brown arrived, and it was placed on a pedestal in the grounds of Balmoral at a spot about two hundred yards north-west of the Castle, the site being selected by the Queen. The great sculptor superintended the ceremony of unveiling his work. On the 15th of June the Queen attended Crathie Church, for the first time since October, 1882, greatly to the relief of her God-fearing neighbours, who had begun to entertain a shocking suspicion that she had given up attendance at “public worship.” On the 25th the Court returned to Windsor, after a delightful holiday spent in the brightest and sunniest of weather. Every afternoon the Queen had been able to drive about Deeside, and she had even visited, though she had not stayed at, her cottage at the Glassalt Shiel. Though the return of the Prince of Wales to town from Wiesbaden early in June had given a fillip to a chilling season, Society was dull in the summer of 1884. Lord Sydney and Lord Kenmare had gently suggested to the Queen that her refusal to permit Drawing Rooms and State Concerts to be held was causing much disappointment at the West End, but without avail. Her Majesty, however, showed much tenacity in forbidding these functions, the proposal of which by the great officers of the Household she deemed disrespectful to the memory of her dead son. Nor was she conciliated by being reminded that during the season of 1861, after the death of the Duchess of Kent, she had held Drawing Rooms herself, whereas now she had the Princess of Wales ready to relieve her of the burden of attending them. Londoners, however, had their compensations. They discovered, in the gay and glittering gardens of the Health Exhibition at South Kensington, with