Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 2 by Sarah Tytler
page 28 of 350 (08%)
page 28 of 350 (08%)
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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 |
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