If anyone wonders why the Queen is so fond of her Highland home, it must be because the questioner has never seen it, since of all the dwelling-places of men it is surely the most desirable. It stands on a slight eminence near the Dee, which winds round it in a great bend. Swiftly the beautifully clear water rolls past. The low ground, richly fertile, is green in summer-time with various leafage. Behind the castle rises the graceful height of Craig-na-gow-an, clothed with the slender birch-tree. The cairn on the top, to the memory of Albert the Good, reminds us of the great sorrow of Victoria's life. The castle lies at the foot of the hill, protected from the wild winter winds. In both near and remote distance we have the ever-beautiful background of the everlasting hills, immovable, and yet ever changing in place and appearance with each change of light and shade. Ben Macdhui in one direction is most prominent, dark Lochnagar in another. The scenery is "wild, and yet not desolate," as the Queen simply, yet truly, puts it. Its varied aspects give, from one point of view or another, examples of all Deeside views. The castle itself is built of very fine granite. It has a noble appearance, yet the architecture is of the simplest baronial Scotch style. It has all the traditional comfort of our island dwellings. It is, in a word, a genuine English home amidst the finest Highland scenery. What combination could be more attractive? Two miles farther down is Abergeldie, of which the castle is occupied by the Prince of Wales when in these parts. Between the two is Crathie Kirk, where the royal household and their visitors worship in simple Presbyterian fashion in the autumn months. Abergeldie has an old reputation for its birks. There used to be a quaint old song in two verses which told their praise. In the first verse an ardent wooer entreats one of those innumerable "bonnie lassies" of Scotch popular poetry to hie thither under his escort. She is to have all sorts of fine things-- "Ye sall get a gown o' silk And coat o' collimankie." What on earth is collimankie? asks the reader. In truth I cannot tell, and I fear to look up the word in Jamieson lest it turn out to be something commonplace. The second verse is the young lady's reply. It is deliciously arch and simple:-- "Na, kind sir, I dare nae gang, My minny will be angry. Sair, sair wad she flyte, Wad she flyte, wad she flyte, Sair, sair, wad she flyte, And sair wad she ban me!"