Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/440

 abodes in those parts of her dominions which were peculiarly congenial to her the Isle of Wight and the highlands of Scotland. Her residence in the south was secured first. Late in 1844 she purchased of Lady Isabella Blachford the estate of Osborne, consisting of about eight hundred acres, near East Cowes. Subsequent purchases increased the land to about two thousand acres. The existing house proved inconvenient, and the foundation-stone of a new one was laid on 23 June 1845. A portion of it was occupied in September 1846, although the whole was not completed until 1851. In the grounds was set up in 1854 a Swiss cottage as a workshop and playhouse for the children. In the designing of the new Osborne House and in laying out the gardens Prince Albert took a very active part. The queen interested herself in the neighbourhood, and rebuilt the parish church at Whippingham. In 1848 the queen leased of the Fife trustees Balmoral House, as her residence in the highlands; she purchased it in 1852, and then resolved to replace it by an elaborate edifice. The new Balmoral Castle was completed in the autumn of 1854, and large additions were subsequently made to the estate. The Duchess of Kent rented in the neighbourhood Abergeldie Castle, which was subsequently occupied by the prince of Wales. At Balmoral, after 1854, a part of every spring and autumn was spent during the rest of the queen's life, while three or four annual visits were paid regularly to Osborne. At both Osborne and Balmoral very homely modes of life were adopted, and, at Balmoral especially, ministers and foreign friends were surprised at the simplicity which characterised the queen's domestic arrangements. Before the larger house was built only two sitting-rooms were occupied by the royal family. Of an evening billiards were played in the one, under such cramped conditions that the queen, who usually looked on, had constantly to move her seat to give the players elbow-space. In the other room the queen at times would take lessons in the Scotch reel. The minister in attendance did all his work in his small bedroom, and the queen would run carelessly in and out of the house all day long, walking alone, visiting neighbouring cottages, and chatting unreservedly with their occupants.

After identifying herself thus closely with Scotland, it was only right for her to make the acquaintance of Ireland, the only portion of the United Kingdom which she had not visited during the first decade of her reign. Peel had entertained a suggestion that the queen should visit the country in 1844, when she received an invitation from the lord mayor of Dublin, and a conditional promise of future acceptance was given. In the early autumn of 1849 the plan was carried out with good results. The social and political condition of the country was not promising. The effects of the famine were still acute. Civil war had broken out in 1848, and, although it was easily repressed, disaffection was widespread. In June 1849 the queen's attention was disagreeably drawn to the unsatisfactory condition of the country by a difficulty which arose in regard to recent convictions for high treason; commutation of capital sentences was resolved upon, but it was found to be impossible to substitute terms of imprisonment until a new statute had been hastily devised, giving the crown specific authority to that effect.

The general distress precluded a state visit. But personal loyalty to the sovereign was still believed to prevail in Ireland. The queen went by sea from Cowes to the Cove of Cork, upon which she bestowed the new name of Queenstown in honour of her first landing there on Irish soil. She thence proceeded in her yacht to Kingstown, and took up her residence for four days at the viceregal lodge in Phoenix Park, Dublin. She held a levee one evening in Dublin Castle. Her reception was all that could be wished. It was 'idolatrous,' wrote Monckton Milnes, lord Houghton, 'and utterly unworthy of a free, not to say ill-used, nation' (, Lord Houghton, i. 485-5). She received addresses and visited public institutions. Everything she saw delighted her, and she commemorated her presence in Dublin by making the prince of Wales Earl of Dublin (10 Sept. 1849). From the Irish capital she went by sea to Belfast, where her reception was equally enthusiastic. Thence she crossed to the Scottish coast, and after a public visit to Glasgow she sought the grateful seclusion of Balmoral.

On 30 Oct. 1849 an attack of chicken-pox prevented the queen from fulfilling her promise to open the new coal exchange in Lower Thames Street, pageant, and she was represented by her husband. In two ways the incident proved of interest. The queen's two eldest children there first appeared at a public ceremonial, while the royal barge, which bore the royal party from Westminster to St. Paul's wharf, made its last state journey on the Thames during the queen's reign.

In the large circle of the queen's family and court, it was inevitable that death