On the 30th of August her Majesty was amazed to receive information at Balmoral to the effect that an eccentric old barrister called Nield had bequeathed a legacy of £250,000 to her. John Camden Nield was a miser, who had pinched and starved himself for thirty years to add to his patrimony. The Queen very properly resolved to refuse the legacy if Mr. Nield had any relations living who had a claim to the money;[73] but as it appeared he had none, she accepted the gift. The holiday at Balmoral was as bright and happy as could be wished. “Nothing,” writes Lord Malmesbury, who was in attendance on the Queen at this time, “can exceed the good nature with which I am treated, both by her Majesty and the Prince. Balmoral is an old country house in bad repair, and totally unfit for Royal personages.... The Royal party consists of the Duchess of Kent, the ladies in waiting, Colonel Phipps, and Sir Arthur Gordon. The rooms are so small that I am obliged to write my despatches on my bed, and to keep the window constantly open to admit the necessary quantity of air; and my private secretary, George Harris, lodged somewhere three miles off. We played at billiards every evening, the Queen and the Duchess being constantly obliged to get up from their chairs to be out of the way of the cues. Nothing could be more cheerful and evidently perfectly happy than the Queen and Prince, or more kind to every one round them. I never met any man so remarkable for the variety of information on all subjects as the latter, with a great fund of humour _quand il se déboutonne_.” The Prince himself records in his Diary,[74] however, that “Balmoral is in full splendour, and the people there are very glad that it is now entirely our own.” On the 4th of September Lord Malmesbury writes:--“The Prince had a wood driven not far from the house. After we had been posted in line, two fine stags passed me, which I missed. Colonel Phipps fired next, and lastly, the Prince, without any effect. The Queen had come out to see the sport, lying down in the heather by the Prince, and witnessed all these fiascos, to our humiliation.”[75] This happy holiday was sadly broken by the death of the Duke of Wellington, which brought the Court unexpectedly back to Windsor in October, their route being through Edinburgh, Preston, Chester, and North Wales, where they inspected, on the 14th of October, the Britannia tubular bridge over the Menai Straits. The Queen drove through the bridge in a State carriage drawn by men, while Prince Albert, accompanied by Mr. R. Stephenson, walked across on the roof of the tube. On reaching the south end, the party descended to the water’s edge, from which they obtained a complete view of the magnificent proportions of the gigantic structure.