The Royal lady’s voice may have been clear and distinct, but, as a matter of fact, she was thrilled with nervous excitement, quite unusual to her, and evidently due to the fulness of her heart in sharing her husband’s first great personal triumph over English prejudices. “I cannot say,” the Queen records in her Diary, “how it agitated and embarrassed me to receive this address, and hear it read by my beloved Albert, who walked in at the head of the University, and who looked dear and beautiful in his robes, which were carried by Colonel Phipps and Colonel Seymour. Albert went through it all admirably--almost absurd, however, as it was for us.” And the same thought shines through the last entry which the Queen makes with reference to the event. “We had spent,” she writes in her Diary, “a truly pleasant and most interesting time. To see my Albert honoured and esteemed, as he deserves, gives me the deepest satisfaction.... We reached Buckingham Palace at half-past four, and found the children all well. I felt tired and _étourdie_. We walked a little in the garden, then dined alone, and spent a dear, peaceful, happy evening.” Here, perhaps, it may be permissible to say that Cambridge has ever been endeared to her Majesty by reason of many pleasant associations of her early married life which gather round it. As has been stated in a previous Chapter, it was at Cambridge in October, 1843, that Prince Albert first gained any insight into the English University system, during a visit which he and the Queen paid, quite informally, to Dr. Whewell, the Master of Trinity.[84] They had a brilliant reception on that occasion, some two thousand horsemen accompanying them with shouts of welcome. The Royal pair had Whewell for a host and a cicerone, and Prince Albert, in a letter to Baron Stockmar, gives a glowing account of the enthusiasm with which he was received. Many good stories were told of the visit in the University after they left. Professor Sedgwick, the geologist, held some interesting conversation with the Prince in the Woodwardian Museum, and was quite surprised to find that he was a geologist of sound culture, who took much pleasure in teaching the Queen all he knew about the monsters of the Old World, whose history seemed greatly to interest her. The Professor was, however, nonplussed when her Majesty asked him where the head of his pet Ichthyosaurus, which he was unpacking, came from, and was fain to cover his ignorance for the moment by saying, much to her Majesty’s amusement, that doubtless “it came as a delegate from the monsters of the lower world to greet her Majesty on her arrival at the University.”[85]