picture and sculpture gallery, and built the costly Valhalla to
commemorate the illustrious German dead, dined with her Majesty.

At Biberich the Rhine was again hailed, and a steamer, waiting for the
travellers, carried them to Bingen, where their own little vessel,
_The Fairy_, met and brought them on to Deutz, on the farther
side from Cologne. The Queen says naively that the Rhine had lost its
charm for them all--the excitement of novelty was gone, and the
Thuringerwald had spoilt them. Stolzenfels, Ehrenbreitstein, and the
Sieben-Gebirge had their words of praise, but sight-seeing had become
for the present a weariness, and after Bonn, with its memories, had
been left behind, it was a rest to the royal travellers--as to most
other travellers at times--to turn away their jaded eyes, relinquish
the duty of alert observation, forget what was passing around them,
and lose themselves in a book, as if they were in England. Perhaps the
home letters had awakened a little home-sickness in the couple who
had been absent for a month. At least, we are given to understand
that it was of home and children the Queen and the Prince were chiefly
thinking when they reached Antwerp, to which the King and Queen of the
Belgians had preceded them, and re-embarked in the royal yacht
_Victoria and Albert_, though it was not at once to sail for
English waters. In gracious compliance with an urgent entreaty of
Louis Philippe's, the yacht was to call, as it were in passing, at
Treport.

On the morning of the 8th of September the Queen's yacht again lay at
anchor off the French seaport. The King's barge, with the King, his
son, and son-in-law, Prince Joinville, and Prince Augustus of Saxe-
Coburg, and M. Guizot, once more came alongside. After the friendliest
greetings, the Queen and Prince Albert landed with their host, though