The other rooms will require but a brief notice. “The Journal Room” is so named because a complete set of the journals of the Houses of Lords and Commons are there preserved: it contains several portraits, among which are three or four by Sir Joshua Reynolds. This is on the ground-floor. Underneath the hall is the ancient kitchen, not long ago fitted up as a servants’ hall. In the north-east wing is a large apartment, formerly the chapel of the mansion: it has been disused for half a century, having been converted into a bath-room.
The Libraries are spacious and “well stocked;” the principal, which forms the west wing of the house, is styled the Long Gallery; it is, in length, one hundred and two feet, and, in breadth, seventeen feet four inches. According to Mr. Faulkner (“History of Kensington”), whose account was written under the superintendence of the late Lord Holland, in the year 1746, this fine apartment was entirely out of repair, and even “unfloored:” it was, however, at that period completely restored, and converted from its ancient use, as the gallery for exercise, into a receptacle for books, of which it contains a rare selection. The first Lord Holland had fitted it up for pictures; blocking up many of the windows, and opening in lieu of them a large bow-window on the west side. The “West Library” and the “East Library”—two rooms of moderate extent—contain also several valuable folios—curious treasures of antiquity. Mr. Faulkner enumerates some of the more remarkable of the contents of the eastern library, which cannot fail to interest the reader:—
“A curious copy of Camoens, to which the praises of Mr. De Souza, the patriotic editor of the late splendid edition of that poet, have given extraordinary celebrity. It is a copy of one of the earliest editions, and Mr. De Souza alleges that it must have been in the hands of the poet himself. At the bottom of the title-page the following curious and melancholy testimony of his unfortunate death is written in an old Spanish hand, which states that the writer saw him die in an hospital at Lisbon, without even a blanket to cover him.
“‘Que coza mas lastimosa que ver un tan grande ingenio mal logrado! yo lo bi morir en un hospital en Lisboa, sin tener una sauana con que cubrirse, despues de aver triunfado en la India oriental, y de aver navigado 5500 leguas por mar: que auiso tan grande para los que de noche y de dia se cançan estudiando sin provecho, como la arana en urdir tellas para cazar moscas!’
“Specimens of all the types in the Vatican Library, printed in the Propaganda press, A.D. 1640, on silk.
“The music of the ‘Olimpiade,’ an opera of Metastasio, well authenticated to have been transcribed by J. J. Rousseau, when that extraordinary man procured his livelihood by copies of this kind. The hand-writing is so beautiful that it resembles copper-plate engraving.
“Four volumes of MS. Plays of Lope de Vega, the first containing three plays in his own hand-writing, with the original license of the censor.
“The original copy, in MS., of the ‘Mogigata,’ a favourite play of the celebrated Moratin, the first writer of Spanish comedy now living, but who has been proscribed and exiled by Ferdinand the Seventh.
“There are several others of nearly equal interest, and among the MSS. there are many curious autographs of Philip the Second, Prince Eugene, Pontanus, Sannazarius, and others, and three original letters of Petrarch.
“Also a voluminous MS. collection of the proceedings in Cortes, from the earliest period, copied from the archives of the King of Spain. The original correspondence of Don Pedro Ronquillo, the Spanish ambassador, resident in London at the time of our Revolution; part in cypher, with the translation by the side, with several others of equal value and curiosity.”