On November 9, 1859, the Prince of Wales completed his eighteenth year and attained his legal majority. The Queen wrote him a letter which Charles Greville, in his _Diary_, describes as "one of the most admirable ever penned." On the same day he was appointed a Colonel in the Army and given the Order of the Garter--that most distinguished of all orders of knighthood. At the same time Colonel the Hon. Robert Bruce, brother of the Lord Elgin who had proved so successful a Governor-General of Canada and India, was appointed Governor to the Prince and was described by the Prince Consort as possessing amiability with great mildness of expression and as being "full of ability." He had been Military Secretary to Lord Elgin in Canada and was at this time in command of a battalion in the Grenadier Guards.[3] A month later the Prince started on a Continental tour accompanied by the Rev. Mr. Tarver as his chaplain and director of studies. He stayed some time in Rome, where he visited the Pope, on May 7 reached Gibraltar, and from thence visited the south of Spain and Lisbon. He reached home in the middle of June and took up a serious course of study at Edinburgh, with the late Lord Playfair as his instructor in chemistry, and with other equally distinguished teachers in specific lines or subjects. The public was at this time taking much interest in these studies of the Heir Apparent and fear was expressed that he might, perhaps, be over-educated. _Punch_ expressed this feeling in the following lines: "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. * * * * * Dipped in grey Oxford mixture (lest _that_ be a fixture), The poor lad's to be plunged in less orthodox Cam., Where dynamics and statics, and pure mathematics, Will be piled on his brain's awful cargo of cram."