he had left all "to Her Most Gracious
Majesty Queen Victoria, begging Her Majesty's most gracious acceptance
of the same, for her sole use and benefit, and that of her heirs."
Probably vanity dictated this bequest. To a poor old housekeeper, who
had served him twenty-six years, he left nothing; to each of his
executors, L100. But the queen made a handsome provision for the former,
and presented L1000 to each of the latter; and she further raised a
memorial to the miser's memory.

The property bequeathed to her amounted to upward of L500,000; so that,
supposing Her Majesty to have spent every penny of her public and duchy
of Lancaster incomes, and to have only laid by this legacy and the
interest on it, she would from this source alone now be worth at least
L1,000,000. Be this as it may, even that portion of the public which
survives her will probably never know the amount of her wealth, for the
wills of kings and queens are not proved; so that there will be no
enlightenment on this head in the pages of the _Illustrated London
News_.

Both Osborne House in the Isle of Wight, and Balmoral, were bought prior
to Mr. Neild's bequest. These palaces are the personal property of Her
Majesty, and very valuable: probably the two may, with their contents,
be valued at L500,000 at the lowest. The building and repairs at these
palaces are paid for by the queen herself, but those of all the palaces
of the Crown are at the expense of the country, and about a million has
been expended on Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle during the present
reign.

The claims made on the queen for charity are exceedingly numerous. They
are all most carefully examined by the keeper of her privy purse, and
help is invariably extended to proper objects. But whilst duly
recognizing such calls upon her, the queen has never been regarded as
open-handed. Her munificence, for example, has not been on the scale of
that of the late queen Adelaide, the widow of William IV. It is to be
remembered that her father suffered all his life from straitened
circumstances, and indeed it was by means of money supplied by friends
that the duchess of Kent was enabled to reach England and give birth to
its future sovereign on British soil. Although the duke died when his
daughter was too young to have heard from him of these pecuniary
troubles, she was no doubt cautioned by her mother to avoid all chance
of incurring them; and a circumstance in itself likely to impress th