On the evening of the day that she prorogued Parliament, the Queen and
the Prince with the Earl of Aberdeen as the minister in attendance,
started from Buckingham Palace that she might pay her first visit to
Germany. Surely none of all the new places she had visited within the
last few years could have been of such surpassing interest to the
traveller. It was her mother's country as well as her husband's, the
home of her brother and sister, the place of which she must have
heard, with which she must have had the kindliest associations from
her earliest years.

The first stage of the journey--in stormy weather, unfortunately--was
to Antwerp, where the party did not land till the following day, when
they proceeded to Malines, where they were met by King Leopold and
Queen Louise, who parted from their royal niece at Verviers. On the
Prussian frontier Lord Westmoreland, the English ambassador, and Baron
Bunsen met her Majesty. "To hear the people speak German," she wrote
in her Journal, "to see the German soldiers, seemed to me so singular.
I overheard people saying that I looked very English."

At Aix-la-Chapelle the King and Prince of Prussia received the
visitors and accompanied them to Cologne. The ancient dirty town of
the Three Kings gave the strangers an enthusiastic reception. The
burghers even did their best to get rid of the unsavoury odours which
distinguish the town of sweet essences, by pouring eau-de-Cologne on
the roadways.

At Bruhl the Queen and the Prince were taken to the palace, where they
found the Queen of Prussia, whose hostility to English and devotion to
Russian interests when Lord Bloomfield represented the English
Government at Berlin, are recorded by Lady Bloomfield. With the Queen