“The Queen has been up a really high mountain to-day, and has come down quite fresh after many hours.... The Queen is more and more delighted with Balmoral. She makes long expeditions alone with the Prince and gamekeepers, and has never been so independent before.... She went up Loch-na-gar, ... and the same evening entertained all the neighbors at dinner, and was as fresh and merry as if she had done nothing.” Four years later, Lady Canning wrote again from Balmoral:-- “The Queen is fonder than ever of this place, and the Prince’s shooting improves. The children are as merry as grigs, and I hear the Prince of Wales and Prince Alfred, who live under me, singing away out of lesson-time as loud as ever they can.” Greville gives a description of the Royal Family at Balmoral, which deserves notice, especially as he had seen so much of Kings and Queens, and had no great affection for them; he was summoned to Balmoral for a Council meeting in 1849, before the present house, which is on a larger scale than the old one, was built; he writes:-- “Much as I dislike Courts and all that appertains to them, I am glad to have made this expedition, and to have seen the Queen and Prince in their Highland retreat, where they certainly appear to great advantage. The place is very pretty, the house very small. They live not merely like private gentlefolks, but like very small gentlefolks,--small house, small rooms, small establishment.[20] There are no soldiers.... They live with the greatest simplicity and ease. The Prince shoots every morning, returns to luncheon, and then they walk and drive. The Queen is running in and out of the house all day long, and often goes about alone, walks into the cottages, and sits down and chats with the old women. I never before was in the society of the Prince, or had any conversation with him.... I was greatly struck with him. I saw at once (what I had always heard) that he is very intelligent and highly cultivated, and, moreover, that he has a thoughtful mind, and thinks of subjects worth thinking about. He seemed very much at his ease, very gay, pleasant, and without the least stiffness or air of dignity.” He then mentions an excursion in the afternoon in two pony carriages to the Highland gathering at Braemar, and that the evening wound up with a visit from a Highland dancing-master, who gave all the party, except himself and Lord John Russell, lessons in reels.