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 by rail. At Woolwich the royal party embarked on the Royal George yacht on 29 Aug., and on 1 Sept. they arrived at Granton pier. There Sir Robert Peel, at the queen's request, met them. Passing through Edinburgh they stayed with the Duke of Buccleuch at Dalkeith, where on 5 Sept. the queen held a drawing-room and received addresses. Next day they left for the highlands, and, after paying a visit to Lord Mansfield at Scone, were accorded a princely reception by Lord Breadalbane at Taymouth. A brief stay with Lord Willoughby at Drummond Castle was followed by their return to Dalkeith, and they left Scotland by sea on the 15th. Not only was the queen enchanted with the scenery through which she passed, but the historic associations, especially those connected with Mary Stuart and her son, deeply interested her, and she read on the voyage with a new zest Sir Walter Scott's poems, 'The Lady of the Lake' and 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel' (Leaves from the Queen's Journal, 1877, pp. 1-28). Before embarking she instructed Lord Aberdeen to write to the lord advocate an expression of her regret that her visit was so brief, and of her admiration of the devotion and enthusiasm which her Scottish subjects had 'evinced in every quarter and by all ranks' (, Memoirs). On 17 Sept. she was again at Windsor. In November the Duke of Wellington placed Walmer Castle at her disposal, and she and her family were there from 10 Nov. to 3 Dec.

With Peel the queen's relations steadily improved. On 6 April 1842 Peel described his own position thus : 'My relations with her majesty are most satisfactory. The queen has acted towards me not merely (as every one who knew her majesty's character must have anticipated) with perfect fidelity and honour, but with great kindness and consideration. There is every facility for the despatch of public business, a scrupulous and most punctual discharge of every public duty, and an exact understanding of the relation of a constitutional sovereign to her advisers' (Peel Papers, ii. 544). In January 1843 the queen was deeply concerned at the assassination of Peel's secretary, Edward Drummond, in mistake for himself, and she shrewdly denounced in private the verdict of insanity which the jury brought in against the assassin at his trial (, i. 27 ; Peel Papers, ii. 553).

Among Peel's colleagues, Lord Aberdeen, minister of foreign affairs, came after Peel himself into closest personal relations with the queen and the prince, and with him she found herself in hardly less complete accord. At the same time she never concealed her wish to bring the foreign office under the active influence of the crown. She bade Aberdeen observe 'the rule that all drafts not mere matters of course should be sent to her before the despatches had left the office.' Aberdeen guardedly replied that 'this should be done in all cases in which the exigencies of the situation did not require another course.' She prudently accepted the reservation, but Lord Aberdeen's general policy developed no principle from which the queen or the prince dissented, and the harmony of their relations was undisturbed (, Life of Lord John Russell, ii. 54).

Peel greatly strengthened his position by a full acknowledgment of Prince Albert s position. lie permitted the prince to attend the audiences of ministers with the queen. He nominated him president of a royal com- mission to promote the fine arts of the United Kingdom in connection with the Albert's rebuilding of the houses of parliament, and he encouraged the prince to reform the confused administration of the royal palaces. The prince's authority consequently increased. From 1843 onwards the queen, in announcing her decision on public questions to her ministers, substituted for the singular personal pronoun 'I' the plural 'we,' and thus entirely identified her husband's judgment with her own. The growth of his authority was indicated in the spring of 1843 by his holding levees in the queen's behalf in her absence an apparent assumption of power which was ill received.

Domestic incidents occupied much of the queen's attention, and compelled the occasional delegation of some of her incidents. duties. The death of the Duke of Sussex on 21 April 1843 preceded by four days the birth of a third child, the Princess Alice. In order to conciliate her unfriendly uncle, the king of Hanover, the queen asked him to be a sponsor, together with the queen's half-sister, Countess Feodore, Prince Albert's brother, and Princess Sophia. With characteristic awkwardness the king of Hanover arrived too late for the christening (5 June). A large family gathering followed in July,when the queen's first cousin Augusta, Ider daughter of the Duke of Cambridge, married at Buckingham Palace (28 July) Friedrich, hereditary grand duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. In August two of Louis Philippe's sons, the Prince de Joinville and the Due d'Aumale, were the queen's guests.