Lord John Russell to Lady John Russell

    BALMORAL, September 6, 1849

I leave this place to-morrow....  No hostess could be more charming or more easy than the Queen has been—­or more kind and agreeable than the Prince, and I shall leave this place with increased attachment to them.

The Queen had been to Ireland in August, and Lord Dufferin wrote an interesting account of her visit in a letter to Lady John.

    Lord Dufferin to Lady John Russell

    September 10, 1849

As the newspaper reporters have already described all, nay more than was to be seen on the occasion of the Queen’s visit to Ireland, I need not trouble you with any of my own experiences during those auspicious days—­suffice it to say that the people were frantic with loyalty and enthusiasm.  Indeed, I never witnessed so touching a sight as when the Queen from her quarter-deck took leave of the Irish people.  It was a sweet, calm, silent evening, and the sun just setting behind the Wicklow mountains bathed all things in golden floods of light.  Upon the beach were crowded in thousands the screaming bother-headed people, full of love and devotion for her, her children, and her house, surging to and fro like some horrid sea and asking her to come back quick to them, and bidding her God-speed....  It was a beautiful historical picture, and one which one thought of for a long time after Queen and ships and people had vanished away.  I suspect that she too must have thought of it that night as she sat upon the deck and sailed away into the darkness—­and perhaps she wondered as she looked back upon the land, which ever has been and still is, the dwelling of so much wrong and misery, whether it should be written in history hereafter, that in her reign, and under her auspices, Ireland first became prosperous and her people contented.  Directly after the Queen’s departure, I started on a little tour round the West coast, where I saw such sights as could be seen nowhere else.  The scenery is beautiful and wild....  But after one has been travelling for a little while in the far West one soon loses all thought of the scenery, or the climate, or anything else, in astonishment at the condition of the people.  I do most firmly believe that in no other country under the sun are there to be found men so wretched in every respect....  All along the West coast, from North to South, there has been allowed to accumulate on land utterly unable to support them a dense population, the only functions of whose lives have been to produce rent and children.  Generation after generation have grown up in ignorance and misery, while those who lived upon the product of their labours have laughed and rioted through life as though they had not known that from them alone could light and civilization descend upon these poor wretches.  I had often heard, as every one has, of the evils of absenteeism, but till I came and