After being presented to the King, the deputation paid their respects to Queen Adelaide. When she ascended the throne, ’the most beautiful living sight,’ says the Doctor, ’I ever beheld burst upon our delighted gaze. The Queen, with twelve maids of honour, in a perfect spangle of gold and diamonds, entered the room. I am sorry I cannot go over in detail the particulars of their dresses; only that their lofty plumes upon their heads and their long sweeping trains upon the floor had a very magnificent effect.... On each side the throne were maids of honour, officers of state, the Lord Chancellor, a vast number of military gentlemen, and, among the rest, the Duke of Wellington.’ In 1837, on the accession of Queen Victoria, he was intrusted with an address from the University of Edinburgh, which, he tells us, after kissing her hand, he forgot to present till he was checked by one of the lords-in-waiting, when he turned and put it into her Majesty’s hand. His opinion of the young Queen is interesting to us, after sixty years’ acquaintance with our Sovereign: ’A most interesting, girlish sensibility to the realities of her situation, with sufficient self-command, but, withal, simple, timid, tremulous, and agitated, that rendered her, to me, far more interesting, and awoke a more feeling and fervent loyalty in my heart than could have been done by any other exhibition.’ In the summer of 1833, after four years of almost incessant labour, he treated himself to a two-months’ holiday, in pursuance of an old ambition which he had fondly cherished to visit all the cathedrals of England, and survey the country round them from the top of their towers. There was hardly one of the cathedrals that did not in some way excite his admiration. Canterbury and Ely seem to have come in for a special share. Though black and rusty with age, Canterbury, with its tower between two hundred and three hundred feet high, and a fabric studded with massy buttresses of high-wrought Gothic, was a splendid structure. ’But my admiration, though high, was greatly heightened on seeing the interior, which is the most perfectly beautiful of all I can recollect, consisting as it does of a stately vista of confronting arches and pillars, with an effect greatly enhanced by the contraction of the sides towards the east end, and the dying away of the columnar vista into narrower and narrower recesses.’ At Ely, ’aided by the printed guide, I studied the whole of this elaborate and highly ornamental pile with a particularity and a feeling of satisfaction greater than I had ever before experienced.... Expatiated over this noble edifice for hours.... Dined with Mr. Evans at four, but made one more round of the cathedral before dinner.’ On every occasion he was ready for the ascent of the cathedral stair, even where such a climb was unusual; once, he tells us, after the guide had refused to go further, how he came on some jackdaws’