The _Victoria and Albert_ went on to Cork, and the party also visited several other places in Ireland. Wherever they went, the crowds pressed to the water's edge with cheering and shouts of welcome. Cannon were fired and bells were set to ringing. Every little cottage had its flag, or at least a wreath of flowers and evergreens. All were interested in the royal children, and at Kingstown an old lady cried out: "Oh! Queen dear, make one of them Prince Patrick, and all Ireland will die for you."
When the Irish visit had come to its end, and the Queen was about to leave for England, the crowds on the shore cheered her more wildly than ever, and both the Queen and the Prince climbed the paddlebox and waved their handkerchiefs again and again. "Go slowly," ordered the Queen, and the boat moved very slowly along, keeping close to the pier. The crowds cheered with more enthusiasm than before, and three times a return was given to their salute by lowering the royal standard. One of the Queen's party said: "There is not an individual in the town who does not take the Queen's going on the paddlebox and lowering the royal standard as a personal compliment to himself."
The year following the visit to Ireland the Queen's seventh child was born, a boy.
"Now we are just as many as the days of the week," cried the brothers and sisters joyfully.
"But which of us shall be Sunday?" asked one.
"The new baby," answered Princess "Vicky" decidedly, "because he's just come, and we must be polite to him and give him the best."
The little boy was named Patrick, as the old woman in Ireland had suggested, but his first name was Arthur, for the Duke of Wellington, on whose eighty-first birthday he was born.
The days of the Queen were full of joys and sorrows that came almost hand in hand. Her home life was perfectly happy, but her duties as a sovereign took much time that she would have gladly given to her family. "It is hard," she said, "that I cannot always hear my children say their prayers." She had the warmest, most devoted friends, but in the six years preceding 1850, she had lost several who could never be replaced. Sir Robert Peel and Lord Melbourne had died, the opposing Ministers who had both won her confidence and gratitude; and the "good Queen Adelaide," who had loved the little Princess Victoria as if she had been her own child, was also gone. The sorrow which Prince Albert felt at the loss of his father had been to his wife a grief almost as deep; and both she and the Prince were saddened by the loss of the Coburg grandmother, who loved him so that she was almost heartbroken on his leaving her to make his home in England, and called piteously after his carriage, "Oh, Albert, Albert!" The three who had been nearest to the Queen in her childhood were living, her mother, Dr. Davys, and Baroness Lehzen. The kind, scholarly clergyman she had made Bishop of Peterborough, and she saw him from time to time. After the marriage of the Queen the Baroness Lehzen returned to her friends in Germany, but the busy sovereign found time to send her long and frequent letters.