"Augustus at Rome was for building renown'd,
For of marble he left what of brick he had found;
But is not our Nash, too, a very great master?
He finds us all brick and he leaves us all plaster."
The gateway to the palace was designed from Constantine's Arch in Rome, and was intended to carry an equestrian statue of George IV. upon the top. This gateway, the Marble Arch, now stands at the Oxford Street entrance to Hyde Park, having been moved there in 1851.
After the builders had left the much-criticized palace, it was left empty and bare, until Queen Victoria came to the Throne, when the girl-Queen soon made the lifeless palace full of animation and happiness. All through her long reign Buckingham Palace is intimately associated with her, from her Coronation Day, that June morning when all London welcomed her with enthusiasm, down to the Diamond Jubilee, when the aged Queen could say, "From my heart I thank my beloved people." It was from the palace that she set out on a cheerless February morning to her wedding in Westminster Abbey, and a great part of her happy married life was spent there, when in company with her beloved husband she held a brilliant Court. Two fancy dress balls were held, one where all the noblest and most distinguished in England came arrayed in the dress of the Plantagenets, and the other where all appeared in Georgian costumes.
The marriage of the Princess Royal to the Crown Prince of Germany took place from Buckingham Palace. Though a highly approved love-match, it caused considerable grief to the royal household, the Queen finding it extremely difficult to part with her eldest daughter. The Queen wrote of it as "the second most eventful day" in her life, and after the young pair had set off for their new home in Germany, she said, "My tears began to flow afresh frequently, and I could not go near Vicky's corridor."
The public will not soon forget the momentous events associated with the palace during the last reign; the serious illness of King Edward, on the eve of his Coronation, postponing the great ceremony for which many distinguished visitors had already arrived, and then after a short but brilliant reign, the sudden death of the popular monarch, throwing all the country into mourning. Almost before anyone knew that the King was seriously ill, for he had only just come back from Biarritz, the bulletin, announcing that "His Majesty breathed his last" within the palace, was read by the sorrowing crowds.