to the purchase of a site at South Kensington, for the Science and Art Institution which he hoped to see created. Ninety acres of land were bought for £342,500, of which sum Government advanced £177,500, with the intention of transferring the National Gallery to the site. The agent of the Commissioners, however, had in purchasing the land stupidly agreed to take it on a building lease, under conditions which would have destroyed their plans, and involved them in the dilemma of repudiating their agent, or incurring liabilities to erect dwelling-houses, which they dared not undertake. The vendor, Baron Villars, generously permitted them to make other arrangements for buying the fee-simple of the land; but the anxieties of the Prince during the period when the issue was in suspense preyed terribly on his mind and health, and the Queen has herself recorded how she exhausted all means in her power to cheer and sustain him in his distress. [Illustration: THE QUEEN’S VISIT TO THE BRITANNIA TUBULAR BRIDGE.] Her Majesty’s birthday was spent in the sunshine of domestic happiness at Osborne. In the festivities of the season the Queen, early in June, assures her uncle, King Leopold, that she and her family joined only to a limited extent. They gave two State balls and two State concerts. They go, she says, three or four times a week to the play or opera, are hardly ever later than midnight in going to bed and, but for the fagging business of public affairs, the Season “would be nothing to us.” During the summer, life at Osborne was diversified by several short yachting excursions round the South Coast. In August the Queen planned and carried out a brief visit to her uncle, King Leopold of Belgium, reaching Antwerp on the 10th in the Royal yacht in a tempest of wind and rain. At the King’s country seat at Laeken the Royal party spent four bright and happy days, saddened only by the too visible gap in the family circle, left by the death of Queen Louise. The disagreeable and tempestuous voyage homeward was only broken by a charming visit to Terneusen, where the simple hospitality and quaint old-world ways of the villagers greatly delighted her Majesty, who seems to have passed a pleasant day among them.