Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria

Broadlands, 18th September 1860.

Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and will have the honour of waiting upon your Majesty at Osborne to-morrow. Your Majesty must naturally feel regret at shortening so much your Majesty's agreeable holiday in the Highlands, though the happiness of meeting the Princess Royal must amply make amends for it; but the fact is that of all the gifts which good fairies were in the habit of bestowing on their favourites, that which would have been the most desirable would have been the power which the Irishman ascribed to a bird, of being in two places at one and the same time.