On the 8th of March, 1855, the Queen, accompanied by Prince Albert, and by the Duke of Cambridge, the Prince of Wales, and Prince Alfred, visited the military hospitals at Fort Pitt and Brompton, Chatham. Fort Pitt was then the only general military hospital in England. As this hospital and that of Brompton contained together only 361 patients, it could not be considered that the royal visit was elicited by the peculiar calamities of the place. But the immense extent of the hospitals in the East, and the sufferings of the poor wounded soldiers lying within these vast lazar-houses, had raised in the breast of all England a feeling of pity and horror. In this feeling the Queen most deeply participated. While her visit to the only hospital in this country in which the sufferers by the war were received, was a gratification to her own kindly sympathies, and most cheering and solacing to the inmates, it could not fail to convey to the thousands of sufferers in the East, and to the kinsmen and kinswomen whose hearts bled for them at home, that no heart was fuller of pity than that of her under whose flag they had fought and fallen. The whole of the wounded who were in a condition to leave their beds were drawn up in chairs on the lawn, each having written upon it a card containing the name and services of the occupant, the nature of his wounds, and where they were received. The Queen passed along the line, saying a few kind words to those sufferers who particularly attracted her notice, or to those whose services were specially commended. She visited every ward, except that containing fever cases. A few days after, the Queen reviewed some cavalry and artillery at Woolwich. After the review, she visited the hospital, and saw the wounded artillery-men who had returned from the Crimea. Nor were these isolated exhibitions of sentiment or emotion. Upon every occasion during the continuance of the war, the Queen showed the most heartfelt sympathy with her brave soldiers; visited their hospitals and transport ships; received the wounded at her palace, and suggested and liberally assisted in the establishment of permanent means of relief for them and their families. A beautiful letter of the Queen, which was accidentally made public about this time, showed that in the privacy of domestic life Her Majesty never forgot these sufferers. Indeed, she complained that she was not kept sufficiently informed of the needs of those who had returned wounded to their country. [Sidenote: DISTRIBUTION OF WAR MEDALS.]