NEWS OF THE WEEK.
QUEEN VICTORIA has set herself down in her Highland lodging at Ardverikie, among the Macphersons. She was welcomed by Cluny Macpherson and his kilted clansmen, a host of moun- taineers, and a Scotch mist. The district is not only remote, but wild : the very house she lives in, compared even to her abode at Blair Athol], seems to be simple to the degree of almost Spartan bareness. It is as if she had sought the wildest and remotest spot in order to get, not only the most robust deer-stalking for the Prince, but for her Majesty absolute seclusion, beyond the reach of tourists and "gentlemen connected with the press." No hope of it : the newspaper-reporters are there, describing might and main ; and Ardverikie will probably become a Cockney jaunt.
But civilization was already struggling with the wildness, vigorously as that survives. The aborigines, it appears, have not yet coined a name for " Queen," whom they can only designate by the inappropriate periphrasis of "the King's wife." How can they compass the designation of the Prince Consort? must they call him " the King's wife's husband "1—But they are awakening to modern sentiments. Although the district is one in which stronger traces of Jacobite loyalty remain than anywhere per- haps in the uplands of Scotland, the mountain rigour unbends to the youthful Sovereign ; and the Highlanders think it necessary to signify that they.wailli obtruding the exclusive claims of the Pretender : they notify this in an inscription of "Two in one," --signifying that in Queen Victoria's person theyobligingly recog- nize the house of Stuart as well as that of Brunswick. Another sign of the times was a copious admixture, among claymores and +shields, of cotton umbrellas. In London the fashion of carrying the umbrella has visibly declined : the effeminate convenience has passed to the hardy Lochaber men. It will next come to the navy, and no sailor will go aloft in a shower without his " four- and-sixpenny cotton."
