The Grand Duchess, when she came to her new home, brought her own weather with her. She was introduced by the Queen to London and the Londoners on the 12th of March, in the midst of a bleak and blinding snowstorm. That dense crowds of people should line the street, and stand for hours in the half-frozen slush, for an opportunity of bidding the Grand Duchess welcome to her new home, afforded an impressive testimony to the deep-seated loyalty of the capital. The Queen, the Grand Duchess, the Duke of Edinburgh, and other members of the Royal Family, left Windsor Castle at 11 o’clock in closed carriages for the railway station, under a brilliant escort of Scots Greys. The Royal train steamed to Paddington terminus, which was all ablaze with Russian and English colours. The people thronged the windows, balconies, the house-tops, and the pavements, and each side of the roadway, all along from Paddington to Buckingham Palace, and the Queen and the Royal couple showed their appreciation of the splendid reception which was given to them by braving the snowstorm in an open landau. The Queen, who was dressed in half-mourning, smilingly bowed in acknowledgment of the hearty cheering, and the Grand Duchess, who sat by her side, attired in a purple velvet mantle edged with fur, a pale blue silk dress and white bonnet, was evidently surprised at the warm greeting she received. The route was lined by the military and police. The streets were full of loyal but bedraggled decorations, and grimly festive with limp flags and illegible mottoes. Nothing could be more gracious than the smiling demeanour of the Queen and her new daughter-in-law, and nothing more pitiable than the obvious discomfort of the poor ladies-in-waiting, who sat palpably shivering in their carriages. At night the chief thoroughfares were brilliantly illuminated. “I hope,” writes the Princess Louis of Hesse to the Queen, “you were not the worse for all your exertions.... Such a warm reception must have touched Marie, and shown how the English cling to their Sovereign and her House.” Yet, after the first flush of excitement had passed away, the Russian Princess began to suffer from the common complaint of all Northern women--_nostalgia_, or home-sickness. “Marie must feel it very deeply,” writes the Princess Louis to the Queen (7th April), “for to leave so delicate and loving a mother must seem almost wrong. How strange this side of human nature always seems--leaving all you love most, know best, owe all debts of gratitude to, for the comparatively unknown! The lot of parents is indeed hard, and of such self-sacrifice.” This incident seems to have led to a curious correspondence between the Queen and her daughter, in which her Majesty apparently gave her some solemn warnings about the evil done by parents who bring up their daughters for the sole purpose of marrying them. “This,” observes the Princess Louis in her reply to her [Illustration: MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH.