The Queen and her husband paid frequent visits, and made many tours during their early married life.  It was a great source of pleasure to both of them to feel that everywhere they went they were received with the greatest delight and enthusiasm.

In 1847 they visited Cambridge University, of which Prince Albert was now Chancellor.  “Every station and bridge, and resting-place, and spot of shade was peopled with eager faces watching for the Queen, and decorated with flowers; but the largest, and the brightest, and the gayest, and the most excited assemblage was at Cambridge station itself. . . .  I think I never saw so many children before in one morning, and I felt so much moved at the spectacle of such a mass of life collected together and animated by one feeling, and that a joyous one, that I was at a loss to conceive how any woman’s sides can bear the beating of so strong a throb as must attend the consciousness of being the object of all that excitement, the centre of attraction to all those eyes.  But the Queen has royal strength of nerve."[3]

[Footnote 3:  The Duke of Argyll, Queen Victoria.]

In 1849 they paid their first visit to Ireland, and received a royal welcome on landing in Cork.  The Queen noticed particularly that “the beauty of the women is very remarkable, and struck us much; such beautiful dark eyes and hair, and such fine teeth; almost every third woman was pretty, and some remarkably so.”

The royal children were the objects of great admiration.  “Oh!  Queen, dear!” screamed a stout old lady, “make one of them Prince Patrick, and all Ireland will die for you.”

In Dublin, the capital of a country which had very recently been in revolt, the loyal welcome was, if possible, even more striking.

The Queen writes:  “It was a wonderful and striking spectacle, such masses of human beings, so enthusiastic, so excited, yet such perfect order maintained; then the numbers of troops, the different bands stationed at certain distances, the waving of hats and handkerchiefs, the bursts of welcome which rent the air—­all made a never-to-be-forgotten scene.”

Lord Clarendon, writing of the results of the Irish tour, said, “The people are not only enchanted with the Queen and the gracious kindness of her manner and the confidence she has shown in them, but they are pleased with themselves for their own good feelings and behaviour, which they consider have removed the barrier that hitherto existed between the Sovereign and themselves, and that they now occupy a higher position in the eyes of the world.”

In 1850 they visited for the first time the Palace of Holyrood.  This was a memorable occasion, for since Mary, Queen of Scots, had been imprisoned there, no queen had ever stayed within its walls.