much-prized honour of "meeting" the Queen at a dinner or a ball.
Lastly, her Majesty and the Prince planted the oak and the cedar which
were to rank like heirlooms, and be handed down as trophies of a royal
visit and princely favour, to future generations.

The Queen and Prince Albert returned to Windsor on the evening of
Saturday, the 18th of January, and on the afternoon of Monday, the
20th, they started again to pay a long-projected visit to her old
friend the Duke of Wellington at Strathfieldsaye. It was known that
the Duke had set his heart on entertaining his sovereign in his own
house, and she not only granted him the boon, but in consideration of
his age, his laurels, and the long and intimate connection between
them, she let the visit have more of a private and friendly character
than the visits of sovereigns to subjects were wont to have. However,
the country did not lose its gala. Arches of winter evergreens instead
of summer flowers, festive banners, loyal inscriptions, yeoman corps,
holiday faces, met her on all sides. At Swallowfield--a name which
Mary Russell Mitford has made pleasant to English ears--"no less a
person than the Speaker of the House of Commons," the representative
of an old Huguenot refugee, the Right Honourable John Shaw Lefevre,
commanded the troop of yeomanry.

The Iron Duke met his honoured guests in the hall and conducted them
to the library. Every day the same formula was gone through. "The Duke
takes the Queen in to dinner, sits by her Majesty, and after dinner
gets up and says, 'With your Majesty's permission I give the health of
her Majesty,' and then the same to the Prince. They then adjourn to
the library, and the Duke sits on the sofa by the Queen (almost as a
father would sit by a daughter) for the rest of the evening until
eleven o'clock, the Prince and the gentlemen being scattered about in