of Lucknow had been drawn. To meet surprises of invasion a volunteer force was called into existence by royal command in May 1859, and to this new branch of the service the queen showed every favour. She held a special levee of 2,500 volunteer officers at St. James's Palace on 7 March 1860, and she reviewed twenty thousand men in Hyde Park on 23 June. Her brother-in-law, Duke Ernest, who accompanied her on the occasion, did not conceal his contempt for the evolutions of her citizen soldiers, but she was earnest in her commendation of their zeal. On 2 July 1860 she personally The volunteers. inaugurated the National Rifle Association, which was a needful complement of the volunteer movement, and in opening its first annual meeting on Wimbledon Common she fired the first shot at the targets from a Whitworth rifle. She at once instituted the queen's prize of the value of 200l., which was awarded annually till the end of her reign. When on the way to Balmoral in August 1860 she stayed at Holyrood in order to review the Scottish volunteer forces.
Domestic life proceeded agreeably. Twice in 1859 her daughter, the Princess Royal, visited her, on the second occasion with her husband. During the autumn sojourn at Balmoral of that year the queen was exceptionally vigorous, making many mountaineering expeditions with her children. The prince consort presided over the meeting of the British Association at Aberdeen in September 1859, and afterwards invited two hundred of the members to be the queen's guests at a highland gathering on Deeside. On her way south she opened the Glasgow waterworks at Loch Katrine, and made a tour through the Trossachs. She also paid a visit to Colonel Douglas Pennant, M.P., at Penrhyn Castle, near Bangor, and was well received by the workmen at the Penrhyn slate quarries. During the season of next year, when she opened parliament in person (24 Jan., 1860), her guests included the king of the Belgians and the young German princes, Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt and his brother. She looked with silent favour on the attentions which Prince Louis paid her second daughter, the Princess Alice, who was now seventeen, and, although she deprecated so early a marriage, awaited the result with interest. At the same time the queen and prince were organising a tour for the prince of Wales through Canada and the United States, which promised well for the good relations of England and the United States. President Buchanan, in a letter to the queen, invited the prince to Washington, an invitation which she accepted in an autograph reply.
In the late autumn of 1860 the royal family paid a second visit to Coburg. A main inducement was to converse once more with Stockmar, who had since 1857 lived there in retirement owing to age and failing health. The queen and the prince were still actively corresponding with him, and were as dependent as ever on his counsel. On 22 Sept., accompanied by Princess Alice and attended by Lord John Russell, they embarked at Gravesend for Antwerp. Second visit to Coburg, 1860. On the journey they were disto Coburg, tressed by the intelligence of the death of the prince consort's step-mother, with whom they had both cherished a sympathetic intimacy. While passing through Germany they were joined by members of the Prussian royal family, including their son-in-law. At Coburg they met their daughter and her first-born son, with whom his grandmother then made her first acquaintance. On 29 Sept. they removed to Rosenau. Among the guests there was Gustav Freytag, the German novelist, who interested the queen, and described in his reminiscences her 'march-like gait' and affable demeanour (Gustav Freitag, Reminiscences, Eng. Trans. 1890, vol. ii.) On 1 Oct. the prince met with an alarming carriage accident (cf. Lord Augustus Loftus, Reminiscences, 1st ser. ii. 89). The queen, though she suppressed her emotion, was gravely perturbed, and by way of thank-offering instituted at Coburg, after her return home, a Victoria-Stift (i. e. foundation), endowing it with 1,000l. for the assistance of young men and women beginning life. Happily the prince sustained slight injury, but the nervous depression which followed led his friend Stockmar to remark that he would fall an easy prey to illness. When walking with his brother on the day of his departure (10 Oct.) he completely broke down, and sobbed out that he would never see his native land again (Duke Ernest's Memoirs, iv. 55). On the return journey the prince and princess of Prussia entertained the queen and the prince at the palace of Coblenz, where slight illness detained the queen for a few days. Lord John Russell and Baron von Schleinitz, the German minister, spent Relations with Prussia. the time in political discussion, partly in regard to a trifling incident which was at the moment causing friction between the two countries. An English traveller, Captain Macdonald, had been imprisoned by the mistake of an over-zealous policeman at Bonn. No settlement was reached by Lord John. Afterwards Palmerston used characteristically
