The great Duke of Wellington declared that he could not have desired a daughter of his own to play her part better than did the young queen. She seemed 'awed, but not daunted.' Nor was the gentler womanly side of life neglected. She wrote at once to the widowed Queen Adelaide, begging her, in all her arrangements, to consult nothing but her own health and convenience, and to remain at Windsor just as long as she pleased. And on the superscription of that letter she refused to give her widowed aunt her new style of 'Queen Dowager.' 'I am quite aware of Her Majesty's altered position,' she said, 'but I will not be the first person to remind her of it.' And on the evening of the king's funeral, a sick girl, daughter of an old servant of the Duke of Kent, to whom the duchess and the princess had been accustomed to show kindness, received from 'Queen Victoria,' a gift of the Psalms of David, with a marker worked by the royal hands, and placed in the forty-first psalm. The first three weeks of her reign were spent at Kensington, and the Queen took possession of Buckingham Palace on 13th July 1837. Mr Jeaffreson, in describing her personal appearance, says: 'Studied at full face, she was seen to have an ample brow, something higher, and receding less abruptly, than the average brow of her princely kindred; a pair of noble blue eyes, and a delicately curved upper lip, that was more attractive for being at times slightly disdainful, and even petulant in its expression. No woman was ever more fortunate than our young Queen in the purity and delicate pinkiness of her glowing complexion.... Her Majesty's countenance was strangely eloquent of tenderness, refinement, and unobtrusive force.... Among the high-born beauties of her day, the young Queen Victoria was remarkable for the number of her ways of smiling.' Other observers say that the smallness of her stature was quite forgotten in the gracefulness of her demeanour. Fanny Kemble thought the Queen's voice exquisite, when dissolving parliament in July 1837: her enunciation was as perfect as the intonation was melodious. Charles Sumner was also delighted, and thought he never heard anything better delivered. She was proclaimed queen, June 21, 1837: the coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on June 28, 1838, and has been vividly described by many pens. At least 300,000 visitors came to London on this occasion. We are told of the glow of purple, of the acclamations of the crowd, and the chorus of Westminster scholars, of the flash of diamonds as the assembled peeresses assumed their coronets when the crown was placed on the head of the young queen. But we best like the touch of womanly solicitude and helpfulness with which Her Majesty made a hasty movement forward as an aged peer, Lord Rolle, tripped over his robes, and stumbled on the steps of the throne. As she left the Abbey, 'the tender paleness that had overspread her fair face on her entrance had yielded to a glow of rosy celestial red.'