here to have lodged in silken beds. If we choose, we wolf, tell a clearer story of the builder of this Hall than may thread the passages behind these quadrangles, and see how conveniently the officers of the household were disposed-how kitchen and buttery did their needful work beneath the shadow of Hall and PresenceChamber. We go forward towards the second court; but our progress is arrested under the groined roof of the second gateway by a broad flight of steps, which invite us to enter the Great Hall. This splendid room has been restored-that is the phrase-within the last ten years. The lumber with which it was deformed has been swept away; tapestries, which are as old as the days of Henry VIII., have been hung upon its walls; its noble roof has been cleaned, and gilt, and coloured; gay banners float beneath its corbels; the windows have been filled with modern painted glass. Much of all this is in very good taste; but the general impression is that the whole is too fine. The old central fire-place is gone. A few years of smoke from the blazing logs of the old time, curling about the pendants and spandrels to escape by the cupola, would soon give these bright things a proper mellowness. | The painted glass windows, which have been executed at such care and cost by Mr. Willement, are wonderfully suggestive of the intrinsic value of heraldic fame. Mr. Cole (Felix Summerly) has given, in his 'Handbook to Hampton Court,' some very curious extracts from the original accounts of works here executed in the time of Henry VIII. One of the entries is as follows:-"Paid to Galyon Hone, the Kynge's glasier, In the two great wyndowys at the ends of the haull ys two great armys, with four beestes in them, at 6s. 8d. the pece. Also in the said wyndows in the haull is 30 of the Kynges and the Quenys armys, price the pece 4s. Also in the wyndows in the said haull ys 46 badges of the Kynges and the Quenys, pryce the pece 3s. Also in the windowys in the sayd haull ys 77 scrytors, with the Kynge's worde, pryce the pece, 12d." The thirty pieces of the King's and the Queen's arms, and the forty-six badges of the King's and the Queen's, were set up by Galyon Hone, the King's glazier, in the 25th and 26th years of Henry VIII., when Anne Boleyn was Queen; and here no doubt they stood for the consolation of his succeeding queens, who might see that their blazonry would not perish quite so soon as the tenderness of their dangerous lord. But Mr. Willement has satirically set forth the pedigrees of the six wives of Henry VIII., in six alternate windows; and in the intermediate windows, seven in number, are the heraldic badges of the great woman-slayer himself. The west window is filled with the same description of heraldic record. Mr. Cole says, "This window is quite a chapter in English History for all to read who please; a little study of it will fix in the mind all Henry's Queens and his offspring." We had rather not. We would turn in preference to the more intelligible morality of the fine old allegorical tapestry under the Music Gallery, in which the seven deadly sins are associated with seven symbolical animals; and the bearded goat, and the filthy swine, and the ravenous the fleur-de-lis and the Tudor rose; and we are not betrayed into reading the labels of the windows, "Dieu et mon Droit," and "Dne. Salvum Fac. Reg." The tapestries around the Hall represent incidents in the history of Abraham. They are for the most part of a high order of merit. Beyond the Hall is a very fine room, called the Presence Chamber, which is also hung with very ancient tapestry. The second quadrangle, into which we pass after descending the stairs of the Hall, is somewhat smaller than the first. The external architecture was barbarized by the improvements of Kent, in 1732. The northern side is wholly occupied by the length of the Hall; and on the opposite side is the incongruous Ionic colonnade of Sir Christopher Wren. This is commonly called the Clock Court, from the very curious face of an astronomical clock which is over the gateway leading from the first court. (Cut, No. 5.) In the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII. we have an entry of fourteen shillings paid to Vincent the clockmaker at Hampton Court in 1540; and in the same year we have another entry of forty shillings paid to the keeper of the clock at Hampton Court. In the small towers of this court are six remarkably fine busts, in terra cotta, of Roman emperors, there being four similar busts in the towers of the first court. They are said to have been presented to Wolsey by Pope Leo the Tenth. The Chapel, of which we have given Hentzner's description in the time of Elizabeth, is entered by a passage leading from this court. The splendour of its crystal windows and stained glass are gone; and since its original ornaments were swept away in the days of the Puritans, we have the daubs of Verrio and the carvings of Gibbons, open pews and marble floors,—the patchwork of successive beautifiers. Crossing to the south-eastern corner of the second court we are at once upon the grand staircase of Wren's Palace-the entrance to the State Apartments. The general effect of this staircase is grand and imposing. The details of Verrio's wall-painting are execrable. He had filled Windsor Castle with every scoundrel of the mythology, in the glorious days of Charles II.; and upon those walls Neptune presents his trident to the man who let the Dutch fleet come up the Medway, and Jupiter gives his thunderbolts to him who sold Dunkirk. The conceited Italian wrote upon the walls of St. George's Hall, that he had decorated that palace "felicissimá manú ;" and living on to the time of William and Wren the assertion was believed. He was sent for to paint Hampton Court. A staunch Roman Catholic, he objected to work for the Protestant King who kicked out James II. But William overcame his doubts; and he seems to have compromised the difference between the old and the new religions by a prodigious piece of neutrality,— making Julian the Apostate the chief hero of this staircase. We at once pass into the State Apartments, which form the great suite of William the Third's Palace. "With how sad steps, O Moon! thou climb'st the sky." Until the days of George the Fourth, when Sir | my lord was fain to send six of his tall yeomen, to Jeffrey Wyatville changed the character of many of the conduct and convey the Fool to the court; for the state apartments at Windsor, there was slight difference poor Fool took on and fired so in such a rage when he between the show rooms of that palace and Hampton saw that he must needs depart from my lord. Yet Court. Each had its own familiar names of Guard notwithstanding they conveyed him with Master Norris Chamber and Presence Chamber, and King's Bedroom to the court, where the King received him most gladly." and Queen's Bedroom; each had its slippery oak Here is one of Henry's victims, the Earl of Surrey floors, and its gaudy painted ceilings; each was filled (No. 306), also painted by Holbein. He is a queer with pictures, some first rate, some good, some in- strutting unpoetical figure, clothed from top to toe in different, and some execrable. Hampton Court has one red, suggesting little of the ideal of him who now an enormous collection of paintings,-above a could have written, thousand. Many of these have been rummaged out of lumber rooms; some have been brought from other palaces; and a few retain their old positions. As far as the public taste are concerned, it is a matter of regret that the collection is so large. In this palace are the world-renowned Cartoons of Raphael, and the rare and curious Triumphs of Cæsar by Andrea Mantegna. Here, also, are several fine heads by Titian, and a wonderful collection of portraits by Holbein. Two of the most ancient historical pictures in existence, the Battle of Spurs, and the Field of the Cloth of Gold, may fix the attention of the antiquary for hours. But amidst these, and a large number of other rare and valuable things, are some as contemptible productions as ever were sold at a broker's auction; and, what is worse, and a positive disgrace to the country, in the recent arrangement and cleaning and labelling of this collection, the vilest and most indifferent copies are impudently called Correggios and Giorgiones-and foreigners go away and laugh at our ignorance; and the people, who desire in all humility to be instructed in the characteristics of art, are deceived and corrupted by this foolery. "Oh! reform it altogether." There is always an interest-the interest of local association-in seeing upon the walls of an historical building the portraits of those who have played their parts upon that stage. The Hampton Court Gallery has an unusual amount of this source of attraction. There are several portraits of Henry VIII. by Holbein; but the most remarkable picture of this character, and one of unquestionable authenticity, which was at Whitehall in the days of Charles I., is that of Henry and his family. (No. 511.) The bluff king sits in the centre, with his Queen, (Katharine Parr, we presume) and his son Edward on one side; and his daughters Mary and Elizabeth on the other. Coming in at a door is the Court Fool, with an ape on his shoulder. Of Will Somers, the famous jester, there is a portrait (513). This in the family group is an older and sterner looking man-a melancholy fool. We might believe that it was Wolsey's poor Fool, Patch, grown old,— whose affection for his old master in his disgrace, Cavendish has so touchingly recorded: "I am sorry,' quoth he [Wolsey] that I have no condign token to send to the king. But if ye would at this my request present the king with this poor Fool, I trust his highness would accept him well, for surely for a nobleman's pleasure he is worth a thousand pounds.' So Master Norris took the Fool with him; with whom Francis the First of France (No. 340) here also figures, Those who feel and who does not, a melancholy interest in the history of Charles I. connected with Hampton Court, will be abundantly satisfied with Vandyke's noble picture, so often repeated by him. The grave melancholy face is never to be forgotten. (No. 80.) The character of his son may be read in the collection of the Beauties of his Court (No. 173 to 191). They have been banished from the privacy of Windsor, to be here gazed upon by crowds of the honest women of humble life, who wonder that such coarse meretricious creatures could ever have been called beautiful. It is an instructive lesson to see how, with all the flattery of the painter, habitual profligacy destroys what might have been once intellectual beauty, and obliterates even the factitious refinement of high society. These are the ladies that Pepys was very glad not to see at Hampton Court when there was business to be done. It was a queer fancy of Queen Mary to set up Kneller to rival Lely, by painting the beauties of her court (No. 20 to 27). Like Lely's Beauties these are all very much of a character; and look as uniformly dull as those of Charles are uniformly impudent. There must be something beyond the mannerism of the painter to account for this similarity in two such remarkable instances. As flowers take their colour from a soil, and breeds of cattle some of their peculiarities from the pasture on which they feed, so we suppose are faces moulded by the Court habits, which allow no individual development, and subject all alike to the régime which prevails, whether of licence or decorum, of frivolity or dullness. William the Third himself here figures in a wonderful allegorical portrait by Kneller, in which Neptune comes out of the sea, and welcomes him like a tortoise out of his proper element. We have here a room full of pictures by West. The most interesting is that of the Death of General Wolfe, which everybody knows through Woollett's fine print, in which the dull leaden colour of the original is translated into beautiful black and white. George the Third never resided at Hampton Court, but as if to make amends for his neglect of the place, while his family were stuffed up in the little Palace at Kew, or in a lath and plaster Lodge at the foot of his own Castle at Windsor, we have the King, and his Queen, and his children, in every variety of age and costume. These pictures belong now to our historical era; and with all its political blunders, and its unpoetical tastes, it is an era which will be memorable in England for the progress of the middle classes, and for the consequent development of the real resources of our country. It is a great error to speak of George III. in terms of contempt for his understanding, or of suspicion of his integrity. He was the last king who struggled hard to be his own minister, and he made many mistakes in the struggle; but he was a brave and a good man. He knew that he had high duties to perform, and he went about them resolutely; he knew that he had an example to set of correctness without hypocrisy, and his private life was that of a gentleman. If Hampton Court were not remarkable for anything else, it would be celebrated through the world as holding the Cartoons of Raphael. These wonderful productions were designs, as most persons know, to be copied in tapestry. They are drawn in chalk on strong paper, and coloured in distemper. The Cartoons were finished in 1515-the tapestries in 1519. Originally there were eleven executed for the lower walls of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. These extraordinary drawings long remained neglected and dilapidated in the warehouse of the tapestry maker at Arras. Rubens knew of their existence, and advised Charles the First to purchase them, to be used for the same species of manufacture for which Leo the Tenth had employed them. The seven now here were thus saved. There is the following entry in the catalogue of King Charles's pictures: "In a slit wooden case some two cartoons of Raphael Urbino's, for hangings to be made by; and the other five are, by the King's appointment, delivered to Mr. Francis Cleyne, at Mortlake, to make hangings by." It appears that they had been cut into long slips about two feet wide, for the workers in wool and silk more conveniently to imitate. At the sale of Charles's pictures they were bought by Cromwell for three hundred pounds. Charles the Second was about to sell them to Louis the Fourteenth, when the Lord Treasurer Danby remonstrated so vigorously against the completion of the bargain, that they were preserved to us,-to be again neglected. They were fortunately rescued from the lumber rooms of Whitehall by William the Third; and at Hampton Court he built the gallery in which they now are for their especial reception. The slips were carefully pasted upon linen cloth, and then took the form in which they came from the hand of the great master. They have sustained sundry removals from Hampton Court to Buckingham Palace, from Buckingham Palace to Windsor, and from Windsor to Hampton Court; and there can be no doubt that in all their various mutations of fortune, they have been considerably dilapidated. But it is remarkable, considering of what fragile materials they are made, that they should remain as perfect as they are. The gallery is perhaps not very well constructed for their exhibition; but assuredly the notion, which has sometimes been zealously advocated, that they should be removed to London is a very mistaken one. It is said that artists cannot readily see them here. If there be any artist so utterly devoid of enthusiasm as to grudge a pilgrimage of some dozen miles to gaze upon these greatest productions of the human mind in comparative quiet,—to copy them whenever he pleases without obstruction, we should say that he is not very likely to contribute any very striking performance to the English historical school. No doubt the larger number of the chance visitors to Hampton Court are not exactly qualified for their due comprehension. Their colours are dull, their shadows are harsh, they have something higher about them than the realities of common life, and they are, therefore, thought unnatural. It is said that Garrick objected to the truth of the action in the figure of Elymas the sorcerer struck blind, who appears as if his very finger ends were endeavouring to see; and that Garrick was told to shut his eyes, and grope his way in perfect darkness. did so; and the figure of Elymas was repeated by the great posture-maker. It is the characteristic of the very highest works of art, that they do not at first strike the common observer as much as inferior productions. They aim at something much nobler than the production of surprise. It is the same with the highest poetry. Admiration slowly grows out of a perfect knowledge of such works. Compared with these," [the Cartoons] says Hazlitt, "all other pictures look like oil and varnish; we are stopped and attracted by the colouring, the pencilling, the finishing, the instrumentalities of art; but here the painter seems to have flung his mind upon the canvas. His thoughts, his great ideas alone, prevail; there is nothing between us and the subject; we look through a frame and see Scripture histories, and are made actual spectators in 66 He miraculous events. Not to speak it profanely, they | upper part of a hall in the palace of San Sebastian, at are a sort of a revelation of the subjects of which they Mantua, which Ludovico had lately erected. They treat; there is an ease and freedom of manner about hung in this palace for a century and a half. When them which brings preternatural characters and situa- Mantua was sacked and pillaged in 1629, they, with tions home to us with the familiarity of every-day oc- many other pictures, escaped; the Duke Carlo Goncurrences; and while the figures fill, raise, and satisfy zago, reduced to poverty by the vice and prodigality of the mind, they seem to have cost the painter nothing. his predecessors, and the wars and calamities of his Everywhere else we see the means, here we arrive at own time, sold his gallery of pictures to our King the end apparently without any means. There is a Charles I. for 20,000l., and these, and other works of spirit at work in the divine creation before us; we are Andrea Mantegna, came to England with the rest of unconscious of any steps taken, of any progress made; the Mantuan collection. When King Charles's picwe are aware only of comprehensive results-of whole tures were sold by the Parliament after his death, the masses of figures: the sense of power supersedes the Triumph of Julius Caesar was purchased for one appearance of effort. It is as if we had ourselves seen thousand pounds; but, on the return of Charles the these persons and things at some former state of our Second, it was restored to the royal collection, how or being, and that the drawing certain lines upon coarse by whom does not appear. The nine pictures now hang paper, by some unknown spell, brought back the entire in the palace of Hampton Court. They are painted in and living images, and made them pass before us, pal- distemper, on twilled linen which has been stretched on pable to thought, feeling, sight. Perhaps not all this frames, and originally placed against the wall with ornais owing to genius; something of this effect may be mented pilasters dividing the compartments. In their ascribed to the simplicity of the vehicle employed in present faded and dilapidated condition, hurried and embodying the story, and something to the decaying uninformed visitors will probably pass them over with and dilapidated state of the pictures themselves. They a cursory glance; yet, if we except the cartoons of are the more majestic for being in ruins. We are struck Raphael, Hampton Court contains nothing so curious chiefly with the truth of proportion, and the range of and valuable as this old frieze of Andrea Mantegna, conception-all made spiritual. The corruptible has which, notwithstanding the frailty of the material on put on incorruption; and, amidst the wreck of colour, which it is executed, has now existed for three hunand the mouldering of material beauty, nothing is left dred and sixty-seven years, and, having been frequentbut a universe of thought, or the broad eminent sha- ly engraved, is celebrated all over Europe." dows of calm contemplation and majestic pains." There is one room at Hampton Court which is peculiarly appropriate to a national Palace-a room of sea pieces. The embarkation of Henry VIII. at Dover, which we have already mentioned, shows us the construction of the English ships in the sixteenth century; and here we have various battle pieces, from the time of the Dutch war of Charles the Second, to the victory of Trafalgar, in 1805. Greenwich has now a famous Naval Gallery in its Painted Hall; and it might be well that there should be one entire national collection of such subjects. But we are not quite sure that the Hampton Court collection is without its local use, in keeping alive the old maritime spirit. Many of the holiday visitors of Hampton come hither by the wherries of the Thames; and it is pleasant to know that the fine race of watermen who pull their gay freights up to Hampton Bridge, and lounge about for the time of the return trip, may freely walk into these galleries; and, if they cannot understand Raphael and Holbein, may criticise the build of a Dutchman from the pencil of W. Van der Velde, or glow with more than freshwater courage as they gaze upon the terrible reality with which Huggins has painted Nelson's last triumph. Of the remarkable pictures by Andrea Mantegna, we copy Mrs. Jameson's account in her excellent little book, "Early Italian Painters :"-" In the year 1476, Andrea executed for his friend and patron, the Marquis Ludovico Gonzago, the famous frieze, representing in nine compartments, the Triumph of Julius Cæsar after his conquest of Gaul. These were placed round the Having passed through the state apartments, we descend what is called the Queen's Staircase; and go onward into the Fountain Court, the third court which was constructed by Wren. In the time of Hentzner, as we have seen, there was a "chief area," having “in its centre a fountain." It is a pity that such a miserable attempt at a fountain as we now behold is not altogether suppressed. A fountain of some real pretension would be in keeping with the character of this fine quadrangle. We call it fine, looking at it as a work of art by itself. Something much finer was probably pulled down to make way for it; something harmonizing with the ancient character of Wolsey's Palace. Wren certainly did not understand the principles of Gothic architecture-witness his towers of Westminster Abbey-nor of that style of domestic building called the Tudor. He no doubt, therefore, fell readily in with the notion of William the Third, to construct the new buildings of Hampton Court, "in emulation," as Horace Walpole has it, "of the pompous edifices of the French monarch." We are told in the Parentalia,' that "his Majesty said the new apartments, for good proportions, state, and convenience, jointly, were not paralleled by any palace in Europe: and, at the same time, he excused his surveyor for not raising the clois ters under the apartments higher, which were executed in that manner according to his express order." We thus see that William did something more than advise, and approve the designs of his architect. With the exception of the state-rooms, it is most probable that the greater number of the rooms in the old palace were small and inconvenient. But when we see, as we do here, in Wren's buildings, a succession of large apartments leading one into the other along an extensive front, we cannot well comprehend how such arrangements could be compatible with the comfort and privacy of our modern habits. Wolsey appears, however, not to have neglected one of the most important requisites for the convenience of all dwellings, whether palaces or cottages-an adequate supply of water. Mr. Jesse says, "Hampton Court Palace is supplied with water from some springs in Coombe Wood. The distance is two miles, in the most direct line, and the leaden pipes which convey the water are carried across the bottom of the river Thames. There are two pipes from each conduit, making altogether eight miles of leaden pipes. These pipes were laid down by Cardinal Wolsey, for the purpose of supplying his palace with water. A foot of this old lead weighs twenty-four pounds; and allowing one pound for waste in each foot since the time of Cardinal Wolsey, each pipe must have weighed 132,000 pounds, and eight, therefore, 1,056,000 pounds. This alone is a proof of the amazing wealth and resources of Wolsey." beam." In this garden is the celebrated Vine, the largest in Europe, as we are told. Sir Walter Scott, in a charming paper, originally published in the Quarterly Review (Vol. 37), has some admirable remarks on this style of garden, which we are tempted to copy: "The garden, at first intended merely for producing esculent vegetables, fruits, and flowers, began to assume another character, so soon as the increase of civilization tempted the feudal baron to step a little way out of the limits of his fortifications, and permitted his high dame to come down from her seat upon the castle walls, so regularly assigned to her by ancient minstrels, and tread with stately pace the neighbouring precincts which art had garnished for her reception. These gardens were defended with walls, as well for safety as for shelter; they were often surrounded with fosses, had the command of water, and gave the disposer of the ground an opportunity to display his taste, by introducing canals, basins, and fountains, the margins of which admitted of the highest architectural ornament. As art enlarged its range, and the nobles were satisfied with a display of magnificence, to atone for the abridgment of their power, new ornaments were successively introduced; banqueting-houses were built; terraces were extended, and connected by staircases and balustrades of the richest forms. The result was, indeed, in the highest degree artificial, but it was a sight beautiful in itself—a triumph of human art over the elements; and, connected as these ornamented gardens were with splendid mansions, in the same character, there was a symmetry and harmony betwixt the baronial palace itself, and these its natural appendages, which recommended them to the judgment as well as to the eye. The shrubs themselves were artificial, in We pass through the cloisters, and stand in the great eastern entrance of Wren's buildings. The prospect before us, especially when seen for the first time is singularly imposing,-grand, indeed, as a work of art, beautiful in the finest characteristics of its style of gardening. A broad terrace is immediately before us, bounded by velvet lawns, interspersed with parterres of the gayest flowers; the view terminated on each side by a quadrant of lime-trees, and an inner quadrant of fine old yews; and leading the eye to three superb vistas, each of which is commanded from this central spot. Immediately before us is a long avenue of elms planted on each side of a large sheet of water. To the south is a second avenue of the same character of trees; and, to the north a third, which is terminated by the tower of Kingston church. (Cut, No. 6.) In the full luxuriance of their summer foliage, it is difficult to form an adequate notion of the length of these vistas, as it is impossible to convey such a notion by pictures without colour. Satisfied with this view,-and we may gaze upon it long, we pass down the broad walk opposite the entrance, towards the basin, where another miscalled fountain is toiling to throw a few sputtering drops into the sunlight. Green shaven lawns are around us, with empty pedestals on which statues once were, and which ought again to bear some classic burden. Alleys of the smoothest turf stretch north and south, where we may lounge away a summer afternoon upon welcome seats under "boughs" which are not "melancholy." Here we may get that view of Wren's buildings which is given in Cut, No. 2. At the south-west corner is the entrance to what is called the Private Garden,-a very curious specimen of the old-fashioned, long-neglected, but now appreciated garden of a past age, with its raised terraces, and formal flower-beds, and long arcades impervious to the noon-day heat. (Cut, No. 4.) Evelyn calls the arcade here "a cradle-walk of Horn- This passage expresses exquisitely what park-scenery -- so far as they were either exotic, or, if indigenous, Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art, |