While the Prince of Wales was at White Lodge, where the suite of rooms which he occupied still bears his name, he saw much of his relations at Cambridge Cottage; he often rowed up from Richmond or Mortlake, and mooring his boat alongside the landing-stage at Brentford Ferry, would get out and take a stroll in the gardens with his aunt and cousin. The first dinner-party the Prince attended was at the Cottage on Kew Green. By Queen Victoria’s special desire, Charles Kingsley about this time delivered a series of lectures on history to her eldest son, and the Prince remained fondly attached to the famous author of _Westward Ho_, who, till his death, was an honoured guest at Sandringham and at Marlborough House. On 9th November of the same year the King attained his eighteenth year, and became legally heir to the Crown. Queen Victoria wrote him a letter announcing his emancipation from parental control, and he was so deeply touched by its perusal that he brought it to General Wellesley with tears in his eyes, and we have the impartial testimony of Charles Greville as to the character of the epistle, which was, says the famous diarist, “one of the most admirable letters that ever was penned.” On the same day he became a Colonel in the Army (unattached), and received the Garter, while Colonel Bruce became his governor. Exactly a month after his birthday, the King started on a Continental tour, travelling more or less _incognito_ as Lord Renfrew. He was accompanied by Mr. Tarver, who had just been appointed his chaplain and director of studies. The King stayed some time in Rome and visited the Pope, but on 29th April 1859 the Prince Consort wrote to Baron Stockmar: “We have sent orders to the Prince of Wales to leave Rome and to repair to Gibraltar.” For it was very properly considered, that owing to the Franco-Italian and Austrian imbroglio, it was far better that the heir to the British throne should be well out of the way of international dissensions. The King reached Gibraltar on 7th May, and visited the south of Spain and Lisbon, returning home in the middle of the next month; and then, after having seen something of the world, he again took up a very serious course of study, this time at Edinburgh. Meanwhile the education and training of the Heir-Apparent was being watched very carefully by the British public, and a good many people began to consider that their future King was being over-educated; indeed _Punch_, in some lines entitled “A Prince at High Pressure,” undoubtedly summed up the popular feeling, not only describing the past, but prophesying, with a great deal of shrewd insight, the future course of the Prince of Wales’s studies:-- To the south from the north, from the shores of the Forth, Where at hands Presbyterian pure science is quaffed, The Prince, in a trice, is whipped to the Isis, Where Oxford keeps springs mediæval on draught.