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 'To my loyal highlanders, and especially to the memory of my devoted personal attendant and faithful friend, John Brown.' She still took a justly modest view of the literary value of her work. When she sent a copy to Tennyson she described herself as 'a very humble and unpretending author, the only merit of whose writing was its simplicity and truth.' Unluckily her reviving spirit was dashed by the second loss of a child. On 28 March 1884, the Duke of Albany, her youngest and her lately married son, died suddenly at Cannes. This trial shook her severely, but she met it with courage. 'Though all happiness is at an end for me in this world,' she wrote to Tennyson, 'I am ready to fight on.' In a letter to her people, dated from Windsor Castle 14 April, she promised 'to labour on for the sake of my children, and for the good of the country I love so well, as long as I can;' and she tactfully expressed thanks to the people of France, in whose territory her son had died, for the respect and kindness that they had shown. Although the pacific temper and condition of the prince's life rendered the ceremony hardly appropriate, the queen directed a military funeral for him in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, on G April.

The conduct of the government during the year (1883-4) gave her small cause for satisfaction. Egypt, which was now practically administered by England, was the centre of renewed anxiety. Since Arabi's insurrection, the inhabitants of the Soudan had, under a fanatical leader, the Mahdi, been in revolt against Egyptian rule, and they were now menacing the Egyptian frontier. During 1883 the English ministry had to decide whether to suppress by force the rebellion in the Soudan, or by abandoning the territory to the insurgents to cut it off from Egypt altogether. To the queen's dismay the policy of abandonment was adopted, with a single qualification. Some Egyptian garrisons still remained in the Soudan in positions of the gravest peril, and these the English government undertook to rescue. The queen recommended prompt and adequate action, but her words fell on deaf ears (January 1884). In obedience to journalistic clamour the government confined themselves to sending General Gordon, whose influence with the Soudan natives had in the past proved very great, to Khartoum, the capital of the disturbed districts, in order to negotiate with the rebels for the relief of the threatened garrisons. The queen watched Gordon's advance towards his goal with the gravest concern. She constantly reminded the government of the danger he was running. His influence with the natives of the Soudan unluckily proved to be of no avail, and he was soon himself besieged in Khartoum by the Mahdi's forces. Thereupon the queen solemnly and unceasingly warned the government of the obligations they were under of despatching a British expedition to relieve him. The government feared to involve itself further in war in Egypt, but the force of public opinion was with the queen, and in the autumn a British army was sent out, under Lord Wolseley, with a view to Gordon's rescue. The queen reproached the government with the delay, which she treated as a gross neglect of public duty. The worst followed. The expedition failed to effect its purpose; Khartoum was stormed, and Gordon was killed before the relieving force arrived (26 Jan. 1885). No disaster of her reign caused the queen more pain and view of indignation. She expressed scorn death her advisers with unqualified frankness. In a letter of condolence, written with her own hand, to Gordon's sister she said that she 'keenly felt the stain left upon England- ' by General Gordon's ' cruel but heroic fate ' (17 Feb. 1885). She had a bust of Gordon placed in the corridor at Windsor, and when Miss Gordon presented her with her brother's bible she kept it in a case in the corridor near her private rooms at Windsor, often showing it to her guests as one of her most valued treasures. She greatly interested herself in the further efforts to rescue the Egyptian garrisons in the Soudan. In February 1885 the grenadier guards, who were ordered thither, paraded before her at Windsor, and she was gratified by offers of men from the Australian colonies, which she acknowledged with warm gratitude, although the government declined them. At the end of the year she visited the wounded at Netley, and she distributed medals to non-commissioned officers and men at Windsor. But the operations in the Soudan brought her cold comfort. They lacked the decisive success which she loved to associate with the achievements of British arms, and she regretfully saw the Soudan relapse into barbarism.

Home politics had meanwhile kept the queen closely occupied through the autumn of 1884. In the ordinary session of that year the government had passed through the House of Commons a bill for a wide extension of the franchise : this the House of Lords