The evening of her departure, it is interesting to note, the eloquent Nonconformist minister, George Whitefield, preached a sermon at his Tabernacle in London on the marriage of the youthful Queen, and concluded with an impassioned prayer for her future happiness.[63] [63] _Vide Public Advertiser_, October 8, 1766. It was known how unwilling she had been to go, and very general pity was felt for her. "The poor Queen of Denmark," writes Mrs. Carter to Miss Talbot on October 4, 1766, "is gone out alone into the wide world: not a creature she knows to attend her any further than Altona. It is worse than dying; for die she must to all she has ever seen or known; but then it is only dying out of one bad world into another just like it, and where she is to have cares and fears and dangers and sorrows that will all yet be new to her. May it please God to protect and instruct and comfort her, poor child as she is! and make her as good, as beloved and as happy as I believe her Aunt Louisa was! They have just been telling me how bitterly she cried in the coach so far as anybody saw her."[64] [64] Mrs. Carter's _Letters_, vol. iii. The Queen had a very rough crossing, and did not arrive at Rotterdam until six days after she had embarked at Harwich. She landed under a discharge of cannon, and she was received with considerable ceremony by the Prince Stadtholder and other personages. From Rotterdam to Copenhagen is a distance of some six hundred miles. It had been arranged that the Queen should accomplish this by slow stages, and every resting-place on the line of route had already been decided upon. [Illustration: KEW PALACE, WHERE QUEEN MATILDA PASSED MUCH OF HER GIRLHOOD. _From an Engraving, temp. 1751._] At Rotterdam she embarked on the Stadtholder's yacht and proceeded by water to Utrecht, where she stayed the night at the house of a Dutch nobleman. From Utrecht she proceeded by coach, and passed in due course into her brother's Hanoverian dominions. Her retinue was a large and splendid one, and everywhere on the route she attracted great attention, the people coming out to cheer and bless her. She lay for one night at Osnabrück, in the castle, and (tradition says) in the same room where her great-grandfather, George I., was born and was driven back to die. She was received there, as elsewhere, with great marks of distinction. At Lingen in Westphalia a cavalcade of students, arrayed in blue uniforms, came out of the town gate on horseback to meet her. They conducted her to the house where she was to rest, they serenaded her, and kept guard all night under her windows. The next morning they escorted her three leagues on the road to Bremen, where they took their leave. Her Majesty thanked them for their gallant conduct.