Ah,
what an acting, unreasoning thing is the human heart!
Yet the Queen seems to have had a brief return of happiness--to have been
upborne on a sudden tide of youthful joyance, during their autumn stay at
Balmoral. She wrote: "Being out a good deal here and seeing new and fine
scenery does me good." Of their last great Highland excursion, she said:
"Have enjoyed nothing so much, or felt so much cheered by anything since
my great sorrow."
Because of this intense love of nature--not the holiday, dressed-up
nature, of English parks, streams and lakes--but as she appears in all
her wildness, ruggedness, raggedness and simple grandeur, in the glorious
land of Scott and Burns, the Queen's journal, though a little clouded at
the last, by that "great sorrow," is very pleasant, breezy reading. It
gives one a breath of heather, and pine and peat-smoke.
After coming from Balmoral, and its bracing outdoor avocations and
amusements, the Prince-Consort's health seemed to decline again. He
suffered from rheumatic pains and sleeplessness, and he began to feel the
chill shadows of the valley he was nearing, creeping around him. The last
work of his beneficent life was one of peculiar interest to Americans.
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