To Dr Macgregor the Queen is reported to have said at Balmoral in November 1900, "My heart bleeds for these terrible losses. The war lies heavy on my heart." And Lord Wantage assures us that her Majesty's very last words, spoken only a few weeks later, were "Oh that peace may come!" Both assertions may well find credence; so characteristic are they of her whom all men revered and loved. As the head and representative of the whole empire, every bereavement caused by the war had in it for her a kind of personal element. But her sympathies and sufferings were destined to become more than merely vicarious. As in connection with one of our petty West African wars she was compelled to mourn the death of Prince Henry of Battenberg, so in the course of this South African war death again invaded her own immediate circle. The griefs that hastened her end were strongly personal as well as representative, and so made her all the more the true representative of those she ruled. It was in the early days of that dull November, tidings reached her and us of the dangerous illness of Prince Christian Victor. Not alone in name was he Christian; and not alone in name was he Victor. On the voyage out, in the _Braemar Castle_, through the absence of a chaplain, the prince conducted divine worship with the troops. One of our best appointed hospital trains was "The Princess Christian Victor," so called presumably because provided by the bounty of his and her princely hands and hearts. He was what Sir Ascelin declared "The last of the English" to be--"A very perfect knight, beloved and honoured of all men." It therefore alarmed both town and camp to learn that enteric, the deadliest of all a soldier's foes, had claimed him, like so many a lowlier man, for its prey, and that his life was in mortal peril. At that time he was a patient in the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital which consisted of Mr T. W. Beckett's beautiful mansion, and a formidable array of tents that almost covered the whole of the extensive grounds. Here prince and private alike reaped the fruit of the lavish beneficence which provided and maintained this magnificent hospital. All that wealth could procure was there of skill and tenderness, and such appliances as the healing art requires. All was there, except the power to command success. With what seemed startling suddenness the prince's vital powers collapsed, and the half masting of flags, far and wide, told to friend and foe the tidings of the Queen's irreparable loss. [Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Jones_ Part of I.Y. Hospital in the Grounds Surrounding Mr T. W. Beckett's Mansion at Pretoria.] [Sidenote: _A Royal Funeral._]