Illustrated.

1819 MAY 24TH 1899

THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE QUEEN
ILLUSTRATED
BEING AN
H I S T O R I C A L G U I D E
TO THE STATE ROOMS, PICTURES, AND GARDENS
BY
Ernest Law, B.A.
Barrister-at-Law
Author of “The History of Hampton Court Palace;” “The Royal
Gallery of Hampton Court;” “Vandyck’s Pictures
at Windsor Castle,” etc.

Notice.—This Catalogue and Guide are copyright, and immediate proceedings in
Chancery will be taken against any infringers thereof.
LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
1899

HE State Rooms of Kensington Palace, and likewise Queen Anne’s Orangery, will be open to the public every day in the week throughout the year, except Wednesdays, unless notice be, at any time, given to the contrary.

The hours of opening will be 10 o’clock in the morning on week days, and 2 o’clock in the afternoon on Sundays.

The hours of closing will be 6 o’clock in the evening from the 1st of April to the 30th of September, both days inclusive, and 4 o’clock during the winter months.

They will be closed on Christmas Day and Good Friday.

PAGE
	RONTISPIECE. H.R.H. the Princess Victoria at the age of Four	[4]
	Notice to Visitors	[6]
	Plate—Kensington Palace and Gardens in the Reign of Queen Anne	[8]
	Preface	[14]
Historical Sketch.
Early History of Kensington		[17]
Building of the Palace		[18]
Deaths of Queen Mary and King William		[19]
Queen Anne at Kensington Palace		[20]
Death of Prince George of Denmark		[22]
Death of Queen Anne		[22]
George I. at Kensington Palace		[23]
George II. at Kensington Palace		[24]
Kensington in George III.’s Reign		[25]
Birth of Queen Victoria		[26]
Plate—The Duchess of Kent with Princess Victoria (aged Two Years)		[27]
Queen Victoria’s Early Years at Kensington		[29]
The Queen’s Childhood at Kensington Palace		[30]
Plate—The Princess Victoria in 1825		[31]
Princess Victoria becomes Heiress to the Throne		[34]
Queen Victoria’s Accession		[36]
Queen Victoria’s First Council		[37]
Kensington Palace in Recent Years		[40]
Restoration of the State Rooms		[41]
Methods of Restoration		[42]
Arrangement of the Pictures		[44]
Associations with Queen Victoria		[45]
Descriptive and Historical Guide.
Old Kensington Palace Gardens		[47]
Queen Anne’s Gardens		[49]
Queen Anne’s Orangery		[51]
Terrace of Queen Anne’s Orangery		[53]
Exterior of Queen Anne’s Orangery		[54]
Interior of Queen Anne’s Orangery		[55]
The Alcoves of Queen Anne’s Orangery		[56]
Restoration of Queen Anne’s Orangery		[56]
Kensington Gardens		[58]
Queen Caroline’s Improvements in Kensington Gardens		[58]
Kensington Gardens in the Nineteenth Century		[59]
Plate—South Front of Kensington Palace in 1819—after Westall		[61]
South Front of the Palace		[63]
Wren’s Domestic Style		[63]
East Front of the Palace		[64]
Plate—Plan of the State Rooms		[66]
Public Entrance to the Palace		[67]
Queen’s Staircase		[68]
Old Oak Wainscoting of the Staircase		[69]
Window Sashes of the Staircase		[69]
Queen Mary’s Gallery		[70]
Wainscoting and Carvings of Queen Mary’s Gallery		[71]
Pictures in Queen Mary’s Gallery. Portraits of the Time of William and Mary to George II		[73]
Queen’s Closet		[77]
Pictures of “Old London”		[77]
Queen Anne’s Private Dining Room		[80]
Pictures in Queen Anne’s Private Dining Room		[81]
Queen Mary’s Privy Chamber		[83]
Pictures in Queen Mary’s Privy Chamber		[83]
Queen Caroline’s Drawing Room		[87]
Painted Ceiling of the Queen’s Drawing Room		[88]
Contemporary French and German Portraits		[88]
The Cupola or Cube Room		[93]
The Painted Ceiling of the Cube Room		[94]
Plate—The Cupola or Cube Room as it was when the Queen was Baptized in it		[95]
Painted Walls of the Cube Room		[96]
General Appearance of the Cupola Room		[98]
King’s Drawing Room		[99]
Painted Ceiling of the King’s Drawing Room		[99]
William Kent, the Royal and Fashionable Decorator		[100]
Plate—King’s Drawing Room		[101]
Kent the Father of Modern Gardening		[103]
West’s Pictures in the King’s Drawing Room		[104]
King’s Privy Chamber		[108]
Portraits of George III.’s Time		[108]
The Nursery		[113]
Pictures and Prints illustrative of the Queen’s Life and Reign		[113]
Ante-Room		[114]
Prints illustrative of the Life and Reign of the Queen		[114]
Queen Victoria’s Bedroom		[115]
Prints of the Life and Reign of the Queen		[116]
Mementoes and Relics of the Queen’s Childhood collected in “Queen Victoria’s Bedroom”		[116]
King’s Gallery		[117]
Decorative Carvings in the “King’s Gallery”		[117]
Chimney-Piece, Map and Dial		[118]
Plate—The King’s Gallery		[119]
Painting of the Ceiling and Wainscot of the King’s Gallery		[121]
Naval Pictures in the King’s Gallery		[122]
King’s Grand Staircase		[129]
Kent’s Alterations in the King’s Grand Staircase		[130]
Plate—The King’s Grand Staircase		[131]
Painted Walls of the King’s Grand Staircase		[133]
Painted Ceiling of the King’s Grand Staircase		[135]
Presence Chamber		[137]
Painted Ceiling of the Presence Chamber		[138]
Ceremonial Pictures of Queen Victoria’s Reign		[139]

HE following pages, compiled under the sanction of the Lord Chamberlain of Her Majesty’s Household and the First Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Works and Buildings, are intended to meet the requirements of visitors to the State Rooms of Kensington Palace, now open by command of the Queen to the inspection of the public during Her Majesty’s pleasure. This little book, therefore, is to be understood as aiming only at a descriptive and historical account of the particular parts of the building on view—not, in any sense, as attempting a general history of the Palace. Nevertheless, the author may, perhaps, be permitted to say that, as far as his object extends, he has endeavoured to render the information here given as accurate and complete as possible, by devoting the same amount of time and labour to research and verification, as though he had been writing a book of a critical nature for a restricted circle of readers, instead of a mere handbook for ordinary sightseers.

In this way, the writer conceives, can he best promote the object which, it may be assumed, the Queen and Her Majesty’s Government have had in view in restoring and opening these State Rooms to the public—namely, that they should serve as an object-lesson in history and art, and a refining influence of popular culture and education.

In pursuance of this design the author has had recourse not only to such well-known standard authorities on his subject as Pyne’s “History of Royal Residences,” 1819; Faulkner’s “History of Kensington,” 1820; Leigh Hunt’s “Old Court Suburb,” 1853; and Mr. Loftie’s “Kensington—Picturesque and Historical,” 1887; but also to a large number of earlier and less known historical and topographical works, which have served to illustrate many things connected with the history of this interesting old building.

His main sources of information, however, have been the old manuscripts, parchment rolls, and state papers, preserved in the British Museum and Record Office—especially the “Declared Accounts” and “Treasury Papers,” containing the original estimates, accounts and reports of Sir Christopher Wren and his successors, relating to the works and buildings at Kensington. None of these have ever before been examined or published; and they throw much light on the art and decoration of this palace, while also, for the first time, setting at rest many hitherto debatable points.

The author must here once again—as in works of a similar nature elsewhere—express his obligations for the kind assistance he has received from all those who have charge of the Queen’s palaces—the Hon. Sir Spencer Ponsonby Fane, G.C.B., Comptroller of Her Majesty’s Household; the Hon. Reginald Brett, C.B., Secretary of Her Majesty’s Board of Works and Buildings; Sir John Taylor, K.C.B., Consulting Architect and Surveyor to the Board; and Mr. Philip, Clerk of the Works at Kensington Palace.

At the same time he wishes to make it clear that for the information contained herein, and for the opinions and views expressed, he himself is alone responsible.

Here also the author must make his acknowledgments to the editor of “The Gentlewoman,” who has kindly lent him the blocks for the portraits of the Queen.

It may be as well to take this opportunity of emphasizing what is more fully insisted on in subsequent pages, that Kensington Palace, as a public resort, is not to be considered in the light of an Art Gallery, but as a Palace with historical pictures in it. The clear understanding of this may prevent misapprehension as to the scheme followed in restoring the state rooms to their original state, where the pictures—and their frames—are arranged on the walls as a part only of their furniture and decoration.

Finally, it may be observed that though the outline of the history of the Palace, prefixed to the description of the State Rooms, has necessarily been brief, the Queen’s early life, and the interesting events that took place here in June 1837, seemed to require a fuller treatment. These, therefore, have been described in detail, mainly in the words of eye-witnesses, which, though they have often been printed before, may, being repeated here, acquire—the compiler has thought—a new vividness and interest, when read on the very spot where they were enacted; and thus insure for these famous scenes an even wider popularity than before.

H I S T O R I C A L S K E T C H.

ENSINGTON PALACE, built by William and Mary, occupied by Queen Anne as one of her favourite residences, enlarged by George I. and greatly appreciated by George II. and his queen, Caroline, has received a greater renown and more interesting associations from having been the birthplace and early home of Queen Victoria. In celebration of the eightieth anniversary of that ever-memorable and auspicious event, Her Majesty decided on opening the State Apartments free to the public on the 24th of May, 1899, during Her Majesty’s pleasure.

Before recapitulating the events of the Queen’s early life here, we must give a brief outline of the history of the Palace since it became a royal residence.

The original building, of which it is probable that a good deal still stands, was erected mainly by Sir Heneage Finch, Lord Chancellor and Earl of Nottingham, who acquired the estate, including some hundred and fifty acres of meadow and park—now Kensington Gardens—from his brother Sir John Finch. Hence it was known as Nottingham House; and under that title it was bought from Daniel Finch, the second earl, for the sum of 18,000 guineas, in the summer or autumn of 1689, by King William III., who was anxious to have a convenient residence near enough to Whitehall for the transaction of business, and yet sufficiently far to be out of the smoky atmosphere, in which he found it impossible to breathe. The King, assisted by his Queen, at once set about enlarging and embellishing the mansion, and laying out new gardens.

HE works seem to have been begun on or very soon after the 1st of October, 1689. We learn this from the enrolled account of “Thomas Lloyd, Paymaster of Their Majesties Workes and Buildinges,” made up from “paybookes subscribed with the handes of Sir Christopher Wren, Knight Surveyor of the workes; William Talman, Comptroller; John Oliver, Master Mason; and Matthew Bankes, Master Carpenter, and with the hand of Nicolas Hawkesmore, clerke of the said workes, according to the ancient usual and due course of the office of their Majesties workes.”

In the second week of November a news-letter informs us that the new apartment, then being built, “suddenly fell flat to the ground, killing seven or eight workmen and labourers. The Queen had been in that apartment but a little while before.”

By February 25th, 1690, they were sufficiently advanced for Evelyn to record in his diary: “I went to Kensington, which King William has bought of Lord Nottingham, and altered, but was yet a patched building, but with the garden, it is a very sweete villa, having to it the Park, and a straight new way through this Park.” The making of this new road cost just about £8,000.

Building operations were continued during the King’s absence in Ireland; and the day before the news of the battle of the Boyne reached Queen Mary she spent a few quiet hours in the gardens here, writing the same evening, July 5th, to William: “The place made me think how happy I was there when I had your dear company.” Until his return she continued to overlook the building, and on August 6th following, writes again as to the progress of the building: “The outside of the house is fiddling work, which takes up more time than can be imagined; and while the schafolds are up, the windows must be boarded up, but as soon as that is done, your own apartment may be furnished.” And a week after: “I have been this day to Kensington, which looks really very well, at least to a poor body like me, who have been so long condemned to this place (Whitehall) and see nothing but water and wall.”

The work of improving Kensington House continued for another year or more, costing during this period £60,000. It was, however, far from finished, when, in November, 1691, a serious fire occurred, necessitating re-building at a cost of upwards of £6,000. From the year 1691 to 1696 another £35,000 was spent in further “altering the old house,” and in additional works of decoration in the galleries and other rooms—details as to which will be given in our description of those apartments.

Extensive alterations and improvements were also in progress at the same time in the gardens, which at this period were confined to the ground east and south of the Palace, as to which we shall refer again.

RE the work, however, was completed, Queen Mary was taken ill at Kensington with small pox in December, 1694. On learning the nature of her illness she locked herself in her closet, burned some papers, and calmly awaited her fate, which quickly came a few days after, the 28th of December.

Evelyn visited Kensington again in 1696, and speaks of it then as “noble but not greate,” commending especially the King’s Gallery, which was then filled with the finest pictures in the royal collection, “a greate collection of Porcelain, and a pretty private library. The gardens about it very delicious.” Peter the Great’s visit to William III. in this same gallery is referred to in our description of it below.

The next event of moment is William III.’s own death at Kensington Palace, after his accident in Hampton Court Park. “Je tirs vers ma fin,” said he to Albemarle, who had hurried from Holland to his master’s bedside; and to his physician: “I know that you have done all that skill and learning could do for me; but the case is beyond your art, I must submit.” “Can this,” he said soon after, “last long?” He was told that the end was approaching. He swallowed a cordial, and asked for Bentinck. Those were his last articulate words. “Bentinck instantly came to the bedside, bent down, and placed his ear close to the King’s mouth. The lips of the dying man moved, but nothing could be heard. The King took the hand of his earliest friend and pressed it tenderly to his heart. In that moment, no doubt, all that had cast a slight passing cloud over their long pure friendship was forgotten. It was now between seven and eight in the morning. He closed his eyes, and gasped for breath. The bishops knelt down and read the commendatory prayer. When it ended William was no more. When his remains were laid out, it was found that he wore next to his skin a small piece of black silk ribbon. The lords in waiting ordered it to be taken off. It contained a gold ring and a lock of the hair of Mary.”

OND as William and Mary had been of Kensington, Queen Anne was even more attached to it still;—and it became her usual residence whenever it was necessary for her to be near the great offices of state. She seems to have remained satisfied with the palace as it had been finished by her predecessors, except for the addition of one or two small rooms “in the little court behind the gallery,” perhaps because King William bequeathed to her a debt of upwards of £4,000 for his buildings at Kensington.

She devoted, however, a great deal of care and expense to the improving and enlarging of the Palace gardens—as to which we shall have more to say when we come to describe them. Queen Anne, indeed, was, in this respect, thoroughly English. She loved her plants and flowers, and would spend hours pottering about her gardens at Kensington. The appearance of her gardens will best be seen from our reduced facsimile of Kip’s large engraving, published about 1714 in his “Britannia Illustrata.” In the right distance is seen that most beautiful building called the “Orangery” or green-house, erected by her orders—which we shall fully describe on a subsequent page.

Besides enlarging the gardens round about the Palace, Queen Anne greatly extended the area of the park-like enclosed grounds attached to Kensington Palace. Mr. Loftie has declared that “neither Queen Anne nor Queen Caroline took an acre from Hyde Park.” But this we have found not to be the fact. In an old report on the “State of the Royal Gardens and Plantations at Ladyday, 1713,” among the Treasury Papers in the Record Office, there is a distinct reference to “The Paddock joyning to the Gardens, taken from Hyde Park in 1705, and stocked with fine deer and antelopes;” and again in another document, dated May 26th in the same year, being a memorial to the Lord High Treasurer from Henry Portman, Ranger of Hyde Park, it is stated that “near 100 acres had been enclosed from the park of Kensington, whereby the profits he had by herbage were much reduced.” Later on, in George II.’s reign, in 1729, we find a grant of £200 made to William, Earl of Essex, Ranger of Hyde Park, “in consideration of loss of herbage of that part of the said park which is laid into his Majesty’s gardens at Kensington.”

T was at Kensington Palace that Anne’s husband, Prince George of Denmark, at length succumbed, in 1708, to a prolonged illness of gout and asthma. During his last sickness and death, Anne had the “consolation” of the Duchess of Marlborough’s “sympathy.” Her Grace’s deportment, according to an eye-witness, “while the Prince was actually dying, was of such a nature that the Queen, then in the height of her grief, was not able to bear it.” She actually forced her way, as Mistress of the Robes, to the poor Prince’s deathbed, and only drew into the background when peremptorily ordered by the heart-broken wife to leave the room. After Prince George had breathed his last, she stepped forward again, and when all the others had left, insisted on remaining with poor Anne, who was “weeping and clapping her hands together, and swaying herself backwards and forwards” in an agony of grief. The Queen was at length induced to accede to the Duchess’s advice to leave “that dismal body” and remove to St. James’s.

Two years later, in these very same state rooms of Kensington Palace took place the famous final interview between the Queen and her whilom favourite, also subsequently noticed in our description of “Queen Anne’s Private Dining Room.”

N the summer of the year 1714 Queen Anne was seized, at Kensington Palace, with apoplexy, brought on by political worries. She had been failing in health for some time; and on July 27th had an attack of blood to the head, while presiding at her Cabinet Council, and was carried in a dead faint to her bed. Four days after, Charles Ford, an official of the government and a correspondent of Swift, wrote: “I am just come from Kensington, where I have spent these two days. At present the Queen is alive, and better than could have been expected; her disorder began about eight or nine yesterday morning. The doctors ordered her head to be shaved; while it was being done, the Queen fell into convulsions, or, as they say, a fit of apoplexy, which lasted two hours, during which she showed but little sign of life.” At six in the evening of the same day, another anxious watcher within the palace walls, says Miss Strickland, wrote to Swift: “At the time I am writing, the breath is said to be in the Queen’s nostrils, but that is all. No hopes of her recovery,”—and in effect she breathed her last the following day, in the fiftieth year of her age. “Her life would have lasted longer,” wrote Roger Coke, in his “Detection,” “if she had not eaten so much.... She supped too much chocolate, and died monstrously fat; insomuch that the coffin wherein her remains were deposited was almost square, and was bigger than that of the Prince, her husband, who was known to be a fat, bulky man.”

HE day after the death of Queen Anne, King George was proclaimed her successor; and soon after his accession he entered into possession of Kensington Palace. Taking, on his part, also, a fancy to the place, he decided, about the year 1721, to erect a new and additional suite of state rooms, the building of which was intrusted to William Kent, as we shall fully explain in our description of the new state rooms constructed by him. Otherwise, we hear scarcely anything of George I. in connection with Kensington. He lived here, indeed, in the greatest seclusion with his German favourites, and was scarcely ever seen, even in the gardens, which in his reign first became the fashionable promenade, where, in the words of Tickell, who wrote a poem on the subject, in imitation of Pope’s “Rape of the Lock”—

“The dames of Britain oft in crowds repair
To groves and lawns, and unpolluted air,
Here, while the town in damps and darkness lies,
They breathe in sunshine, and see azure skies.”

N the reign of George II. Kensington became more than ever the favourite residence of the court, and much insight into life within the walls of the Palace at this time is afforded us by such books as Lady Suffolk’s “Memoirs,” Lady Sundon’s “Letters,” Walpole’s “Reminiscences,” and, above all, of course, by Lord Hervey’s “Memoirs.” Here is a malignant little sketch drawn by that treacherous, satiric hand: “His Majesty stayed about five minutes in the gallery; snubbed the Queen, who was drinking chocolate, for being always ‘stuffing;’ the Princess Emily for not hearing him; the Princess Caroline for being grown fat; the Duke of Cumberland for standing awkwardly; Lord Hervey for not knowing what relation the Prince of Sultzbach was to the Elector Palatine; and then carried the Queen to walk, and be re-snubbed, in the garden.”

It was the Princess Emily just mentioned who played a practical joke one evening at Kensington on Lady Deloraine, by drawing her chair from under her just as she was going to sit down to cards, thus sending her sprawling on the floor. The King burst out laughing, and, to revenge herself, Lady Deloraine played his august Majesty the same trick soon after, which not unnaturally led to her being forbidden the court for some time.

Although Queen Caroline had to put up with a good deal of snubbing, she managed, at the same time, usually to get her own way. She was very fond of art; and it was she who discovered, stowed away in a drawer at Kensington Palace, the famous series of Holbein’s drawings. These she had brought out, and she arranged all the pictures in the State Rooms according to her liking. Her substituting good pictures for bad in the great Drawing-Room during one of the King’s absences in Hanover, led to the famous and oft-quoted scene between Lord Hervey and his Majesty, who, nevertheless, did not interfere with the Queen’s alterations.

Caroline was also devoted to the then fashionable craze of gardening, and was continually planning and altering at Kensington. It was at her instance—as we shall see presently in greater detail—that the large extent of land, formerly the park of old Nottingham House, and also a portion of Hyde Park, was laid out, planted, and improved into what we now know as “Kensington Gardens.”

Queen Caroline died in 1737, while George II. survived her twenty-three years, expiring at Kensington Palace on the morning of the 25th of October, 1760, at the age of seventy-eight. His end was extremely sudden. He appeared to be in his usual health, when a heavy fall was heard in his dressing-room after breakfast. The attendants hurried in, to find the King lying on the floor, with his head cut open by falling against a bureau. The right ventricle of his heart had burst.

EORGE II. was the last sovereign to occupy Kensington Palace, which thenceforth, during the long reign of George III., was left almost entirely neglected and deserted. Several members of the royal family, however, occupied, at various periods, suites of apartments in the Palace. Among others, Caroline of Brunswick, when Princess of Wales, lived for a short time here with her mother. Her behaviour greatly scandalized the sober-minded inhabitants of the old court suburb. “She kept a sort of open house, receiving visitors in a dressing-gown, and sitting and talking about herself with strangers, on the benches in the garden, at the risk of being discovered.”

Another but more worthy occupant of the Palace in George III.’s reign was our present Queen’s uncle, the Duke of Sussex, who collected a magnificent library here of nearly fifty thousand volumes, which he spent the last years of his life in arranging and cataloguing.

Destined, however, to invest Kensington Palace with associations and memories far transcending any that have gone before, was the advent here of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, seven months after their marriage. They occupied most of the old state rooms on the first and second floors of the easternmost portion of the Palace. Three lives then stood between the duke and the throne, and little could the newly-married pair have imagined that from their union would spring the future Queen and Empress of such a vast and mighty empire as now owns the sway of their first and only child.

HE Queen was born on the 24th of May, 1819, at a quarter past four in the morning. “Some doubt,” says Mr. Loftie, “has been thrown on the identification of the room in which the future Queen was born; but the late lamented Dr. Merriman, whose father attended the Duchess, had no doubt that a spacious chamber, which has been marked with a brass plate, was that in which the happy event took place.” This room, which is on the first floor, exactly under the “King’s Privy Chamber”—the State Rooms being on the second floor—has a low ceiling, and three windows, facing east, looking into the “Private Gardens.” It has been identified by the Queen as the one Her Majesty was always told she was born in. The brass plate, put up at the time of the first Jubilee, in 1887, states: In this room Queen Victoria was born, May 24th, 1819.

Faulkner, writing the year after the event, confirms this identification, insomuch that he says: “The lower apartments in the south-east part of the Palace, beneath the King’s Gallery, have been for some years occupied by His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, whose premature decease—eight months after the birth of his daughter—this nation has so recently and deeply lamented; and they are still the residence of Her Royal Highness the Duchess.”

This is how the event was noticed in the “Memoirs” of Baron Stockmar: “A pretty little Princess, plump as a partridge, was born. The Duke of Kent was delighted with his child, and liked to show her constantly to his companions and intimate friends with the words: ‘Take care of her, for she will be Queen of England.’”

An interesting letter of the Duke of Kent’s, written a few weeks after to his chaplain, Dr. Thomas Prince, who had addressed a letter of congratulation to him while, at the same time, somewhat condoling with him that a daughter and not a son had been born to him, was published in the “Times” at the time of the Jubilee of 1897. In it the duke remarked: “As to the circumstance of that child not proving to be a son instead of a daughter, I feel it due to myself to declare that such sentiments are not in unison with my own; for I am decidedly of opinion that the decrees of Providence are at all times wisest and best.”

HE next reference we have found to the future Queen, is in a letter, written on 21st of July, 1820, when, consequently, Her Majesty was a little more than a year old, by Mr. Wilberforce, who mentions being received at Kensington Palace by the Duchess of Kent that morning. “She received me with her fine animated child on the floor, by her side, with its playthings, of which I soon became one.”

Most of the future Queen’s early years were passed at Kensington Palace in great privacy and retirement. She was often seen, however, in Kensington Gardens, her constant companion in her walks being Miss, afterwards Baroness Lehzen.

Leigh Hunt, referring to this period, mentions in his “Old Court Suburb,” having seen her “coming up a cross path from the Bayswater Gate, with a girl of her own age by her side”—probably the Princess Feodore, her beloved half-sister and constant companion of her girlhood—“whose hand she was holding, as if she loved her.... A magnificent footman in scarlet came behind her.”

The youthful Princess was sometimes driven in a goat or donkey carriage in the park and gardens, and, as she grew older, in a small phæton, drawn by two diminutive ponies. The following gives a little glimpse of our Queen at this early period of her life:

“A party consisting of several ladies, a young child, and two men servants, having in charge a donkey gaily caparisoned with blue ribbons, and accoutered for the use of the infant ... who skipped along between her mother and sister, the Princess Feodore, holding a hand of each.”

N further illustration of the Queen’s life as a little girl with her mother at Kensington Palace, we cannot do better than quote what Mr. Holmes, writing with authority as the Queen’s Librarian at Windsor Castle, tells us in his interesting work, “Queen Victoria,” which, as he remarks, presents for the first time an accurate account of the childhood of the Queen. “During these early years, and before a regular course of studies had been attempted, the family life at the Palace was simple and regular. Breakfast was served in summer at eight o’clock, the Princess Victoria having her bread and milk and fruit on a little table by her mother’s side. After breakfast the Princess Feodore studied with her governess, Miss Lehzen, and the Princess Victoria went out for a walk or drive. It has been repeatedly said that at this time she was instructed by her mother; but this is not the case, as the Duchess never gave her daughter any lessons. At two there was a plain dinner, when the Duchess had her luncheon. In the afternoon was the usual walk or drive. At the time of her mother’s dinner the Princess had her supper laid at her side. At nine she was accustomed to retire to her bed, which was placed close to her mother’s....”

“It was not till the Princess had entered her fifth year that she began to receive any regular instruction.... In this determination not to force her daughter’s mind, the Duchess of Kent acted on the counsel of her mother, who had advised her ‘not to tease her little puss with learning while she was so young.’ The advice was justified by results, for the Princess made rapid progress.”

The Earl of Albemarle, who was in attendance on the Duke of Sussex at Kensington, thus describes in his “Recollections” the appearance of the Princess when seven years old: “One of my occupations on a morning, while waiting for the Duke, was to watch from the window the movements of a bright, pretty little girl, seven years of age. She was in the habit of watering the plants immediately under the window. It was amusing to see how impartially she divided the contents of the watering pot between the flowers and her own little feet. Her simple but becoming dress contrasted favourably with the gorgeous apparel now worn by the little damsels of the rising generation—a large straw hat and a suit of white cotton; a coloured fichu round the neck was the only ornament she wore.”

Her education was now conducted on a regular system. Writing, arithmetic, singing lessons, dancing lessons by Madam Bourdin, “to whose teaching may be due in some measure the grace of gesture and dignity of bearing which have always distinguished Her Majesty,” drawing, and the French language. “German was not allowed to be spoken; English was always insisted upon, though a knowledge of the German language was imparted by M. Barez. The lessons, however, which were most enjoyed were those in riding, which has always been since one of the Queen’s greatest pleasures.”

HE death of the Duke of York, and the remote probability of the Duke and Duchess of Clarence having any offspring, drew increasing attention to the movements of the Duchess of Kent and her daughter. “Many stories are current,” continues Mr. Holmes, “of the behaviour and appearance of the young Princess. The simplicity of her tastes was particularly noticed and admired. It was this simplicity of living and careful training in home life, which endeared not only the Princess, but her mother also, to the hearts of the whole nation.” Charles Knight, as well as Leigh Hunt, whom we have already quoted, has recorded the pleasing impression made upon him by the young Princess. In his “Passages of a Working Life” he says: “I delighted to walk in Kensington Gardens. As I passed along the broad central walk, I saw a group on the lawn before the Palace.... The Duchess of Kent and her daughter, whose years then numbered nine, were breakfasting in the open air.... What a beautiful characteristic, it seemed to me, of the training of this royal girl, that she should not have been taught to shrink from the public eye; that she should not have been burdened with a premature conception of her probable high destiny; that she should enjoy the freedom and simplicity of a child’s nature; that she should not be restrained when she starts up from the breakfast table and runs to gather a flower in the adjoining pasture; that her merry laugh should be fearless as the notes of the thrush in the groves around her. I passed on and blessed her; and I thank God that I have lived to see the golden fruits of such a training.”

The Queen was just on the eve of her ninth birthday when, on May 19th, 1828, Sir Walter Scott dined at Kensington Palace with the Duchess of Kent. He records in his diary: “I was very kindly received by Prince Leopold, and presented to the little Princess Victoria, the heir-apparent to the Crown, as things stand.... This little lady is educated with much care, and watched so closely, that no busy maid has a moment to whisper, ‘You are heir of England.’ I suspect, if we could dissect the little heart, we should find some pigeon or other bird of the air had carried the matter.”

Sir Walter’s surmise, Mr. Holmes informs us, was not altogether without foundation; and two years later, when, by the death of her uncle, George IV., only the life of William IV. stood between her and the throne, she was formally made acquainted with her position.

“The early part of the year 1833 was passed at Kensington. There the course of study was kept up as before, but the Princess now went out more into society and was seen more in public.... The Princess’s amusements were her pets, and her walks and drives, and during the spring and summer she much enjoyed riding.”

It was at Kensington, in the summer of 1836, that the Queen first saw her future husband. The Prince in his diary recorded that his aunt, the Duchess of Kent, “gave a brilliant ball here at Kensington Palace, at which the gentlemen appeared in uniform and the ladies in so-called fancy dresses. We remained until four o’clock.... Dear Aunt is very kind to us, and does everything she can to please us, and our cousin also is very amiable.”

The Princess Victoria was at Kensington when she attained her majority, on the 24th of May, 1837. She was awakened by a serenade; she received many presents, and the day was kept as a general holiday at Kensington.

ESS than a month after, King William IV. died at Windsor at twelve minutes past two on the morning of June 20th. As soon as possible the Archbishop of Canterbury, with Lord Conyngham (the Lord Chamberlain), started to convey the news to Kensington, where they arrived at five o’clock in the morning.

“They knocked, they rang, they thumped,” says “The Diary of a Lady of Quality,” “for a considerable time before they could rouse the porter at the gate; they were again kept waiting in the courtyard; they hurried into one of the lower rooms, where they seemed forgotten by everybody. They rang the bell, desired that the attendant of the Princess Victoria might be sent to inform Her Royal Highness that they requested an audience on business of importance. After another delay, and another ringing to inquire the cause, the attendant was summoned, who stated that the Princess was in such a sweet sleep, she could not venture to disturb her. Then they said, ‘We are come to the Queen on business of State, and her sleep must give way to that.’”

“In a few minutes she came into the room,” says Mr. Holmes, “a shawl thrown over her dressing-gown, her feet in slippers, and her hair falling down her back. She had been awakened by the Duchess of Kent, who told Her Majesty she must get up; she went alone into the room where Lord Conyngham and the archbishop were waiting. The Lord Chamberlain then knelt down, and presented a paper, announcing the death of her uncle, to the Queen; and the archbishop said he had come by desire of Queen Adelaide, who thought the Queen would like to hear in what a peaceful state the King had been at the last.”

T nine o’clock the Prime Minister was received in audience alone; and soon afterwards an informal gathering of Privy Councillors, including the Queen’s uncle, the Duke of Sussex, the Duke of Wellington, and a dozen or so of ministers, prelates, and officials, was held in the anteroom to the Council Chamber, when an address of fealty and homage was read aloud and signed by those present.

After this the doors were opened, “disclosing”—to quote the words of Mr. Barrett Lennard, now the sole survivor of the scene, except the Queen herself—“a large State Saloon, close to whose threshold there stood unattended a small, slight, fair-complexioned young lady, apparently fifteen years of age. She was attired in a close-fitting dress of black silk, her light hair parted and drawn from her forehead; she wore no ornament whatever on her dress or person. The Duke of Sussex advanced, embraced and kissed her—his niece the Queen. Lord Melbourne and others kissed hands in the usual form, and the Usher taking the address, closed the doors, and the Queen disappeared from our gaze. No word was uttered by Her Majesty or by any present, and no sound broke the silence, which seemed to me to add to the impressive solemnity of the scene.”

The room where this took place is low and rather dark and gloomy, with pillars in it, supporting the floor of the “Cube Room” above.

The subsequent meeting of the Queen’s first Council, which took place at eleven o’clock, is familiar to everyone from Wilkie’s well-known picture—“though, at the expense of truth he has emphasized the principal figure by painting her in a white dress instead of the black which was actually worn.” Her Majesty was introduced to the Council Chamber by her uncles, the Dukes of Cumberland and Sussex, and at once took her seat on a chair at the head of the table.

In describing this famous scene, it is useless to attempt anything beyond quoting once more—often as it has been quoted—the admirable account given by Charles Greville, Clerk of the Council:

“Never was anything like the first impression she produced, or the chorus of praise and admiration which is raised about her manner and behaviour, and certainly not without justice. It was very extraordinary, and something far beyond what was looked for. Her extreme youth and inexperience, and the ignorance of the world concerning her, naturally excited intense curiosity to see how she would act on this trying occasion, and there was a considerable assemblage at the Palace, notwithstanding the short notice which was given.... She bowed to the Lords, took her seat, and then read her speech in a clear, distinct and audible voice, and without any appearance of fear or embarrassment. She was quite plainly dressed and in mourning.

“After she had read her speech, and taken and signed the oath for the security of the Church of Scotland, the Privy Councillors were sworn, the two Royal Dukes (of Cumberland and Sussex) first, by themselves; and as these two old men, her uncles, knelt before her, swearing allegiance and kissing her hand, I saw her blush up to the eyes, as if she felt the contrast between their civil and their natural relations, and this was the only sign of emotion she evinced. Her manner to them was very graceful and engaging: she kissed them both, and rose from her chair and moved towards the Duke of Sussex, who was farthest from her and too infirm to reach her. She seemed rather bewildered at the multitude of men who were sworn, and who came one after the other to kiss her hand, but she did not speak to anybody, nor did she make the slightest difference in her manner, or show any in her countenance, to any individual of any rank, station or party. I particularly watched her when Melbourne and the Ministers and the Duke of Wellington and Peel approached her. She went through the whole ceremony—occasionally looking at Melbourne for instruction when she had any doubt what to do, which hardly ever occurred—with perfect calmness and self-possession, but at the same time with a graceful modesty and propriety particularly interesting and ingratiating. When the business was done she retired as she had entered.

“Peel said how amazed he was at her manner and behaviour, at her apparent deep sense of her situation, her modesty, and at the same time her firmness. She appeared, in fact, to be awed, but not daunted, and afterwards the Duke of Wellington told me the same thing, and added that if she had been his own daughter he could not have desired to see her perform her part better.”

This description of Charles Greville’s, whose pen was given to anything but flattery, is confirmed by the testimony of many others present. Earl Grey wrote to Princess Lieven: “When called upon for the first time to appear before the Privy Council, and to take upon herself the awful duties with which at so early an age she has been so suddenly charged, there was in her appearance and demeanour a composure, a propriety, an aplomb, which were quite extraordinary. She never was in the least degree confused, embarrassed or hurried; read the declaration beautifully; went through the forms of business as if she had been accustomed to them all her life.” Lord Palmerston says in a letter to Lord Granville: “The Queen went through her task with great dignity and self-possession; one saw she felt much inward emotion, but it was fully controlled. Her articulation was particularly good, her voice remarkably pleasing.”

Next day, the 21st of June, at ten o’clock in the morning, Her Majesty was formally proclaimed Queen of Great Britain and Ireland at St. James’s Palace, when a salute was fired in the Park, and she appeared at the window of the Presence Chamber, returning afterwards to Kensington Palace. On the 13th of July the Queen, accompanied by her mother, the Duchess of Kent, took her final departure from the place of her birth and the home of her childhood.

INCE the accession of the Queen, Kensington Palace has had a quiet and uneventful history—though Her Majesty has frequently, in the course of her reign, privately revisited her old home, where the Duchess of Kent retained her rooms until her death in 1861; and where, soon after that date, Princess Mary and the Duke of Teck also came to reside for a period. Here their daughter, Princess May, now the Duchess of York, was born in the State Room called “the Nursery,” in 1867.

In the meanwhile, the apartments in the south-west corner of the Palace, occupied by the Duke of Sussex until his death in 1843, were afterwards tenanted by his widow, the Duchess of Inverness, who died in 1873, when they were granted by the Queen to Princess Louise and the Marquis of Lorne, who still reside in them.

During all these sixty years the Palace had been suffered gradually more and more to fall into a deplorable state of disrepair. The walls were bulging in many places, and merely remained standing by being shored up; the rafters of the roof were beginning to rot away, tiles and slates were broken and slipping off, so that it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep the rain and wind at bay. The floors, also, were everywhere deteriorating, the old panelled walls and painted ceilings of the grand reception rooms slowly, but surely, crumbling to decay.

“More than once,” said a leading article in “The Times” of January 12th, 1898, “it has been seriously proposed to pull the whole building down, and to deal otherwise with the land, and Her Majesty’s subjects ought to be grateful to her for having strenuously resisted such an act of Vandalism, and for having declared that, while she lived, the palace in which she was born should not be destroyed.”

HE Queen, it is believed, had long desired that her people’s wish to be admitted to inspect the Palace of her ancestors, and her own birthplace and early home, should be gratified; and it seemed a fitting memorial of the Diamond Jubilee that this should be done. An obdurate Treasury, which, as we have hinted, had looked forward rather to demolition than restoration, was at length induced to recommend the expenditure necessary to prepare the State Rooms for the admission of the public, and thus, on the 11th of January, 1898, it was possible to make the following gratifying announcement in the press:

“Her Majesty, in her desire to gratify the wishes of Her people, has directed that the State Rooms at Kensington Palace, in the central part of the building, which have been closed and unoccupied since 1760, together with Sir Christopher Wren’s Banqueting Room, attached to the Palace, shall after careful restoration be opened to the public, during her pleasure; and the Government will forthwith submit to Parliament an estimate of the cost of restoration.”

Accordingly the Board of Works proceeded to prepare estimates and on March 4th following, the First Commissioner, Mr. Akers Douglas, M.P., submitted a vote of £23,000 for the purpose. By a unanimous vote of the House of Commons on April 1st, the amount required was at once agreed to, and great gratification was on all sides expressed that so happy solution had at length been arrived at. Forthwith, the restorations were put in hand—the most pressing repairs having, indeed, been begun in anticipation, previous to the passing of the vote—and for many months they consisted entirely in solid structural works, which scarcely seemed to affect the appearance of the building at all. It was found necessary to rebuild and underpin walls, to reslate practically the whole of the roof over the State Apartments and renew the timbers that carried it; and also almost all the floors. After these heavy works, and those consequent on the installation of the hot-water warming apparatus, were completed, the more interesting, but much more difficult, business involved in the restoration of the old decorative ironwork, woodwork, and paintings of the State Rooms was taken in hand.

The more substantial but less salient work having been carried out, the decorative works were next proceeded with, under the constant supervision of Sir John Taylor, K.C.B., Consulting Architect and Surveyor to H.M.’s Board of Works, and the continual and immediate control of Mr. Philip, temporary Clerk of the Works for Kensington Palace. Moreover, the Hon. Reginald Brett, C.B., Secretary of the Board, to whose initiative the whole scheme of the restoration, we may say, has been mainly due, has given a constant close personal attention to everything that has been done. Nor has any trouble, labour, or research been spared to render everything as historically and archæologically correct as possible.

HE principles on which the restorations have been carried out will more fully appear, in the description we give in our subsequent pages, in regard to every detail of the work. Here we need only say that the most studied care has been taken never to renew any decoration where it was possible to preserve it—least of all ever to attempt to “improve” old work into new. On the contrary, repairing, patching, mending, piecing, cleaning, have been the main occupations of the decorators, to an extent that would render some impatient, slapdash builders and surveyors frantic. Yet it has been all this minute—though no doubt sometimes costly—attention to details, this laborious piecing together of old fragments, this reverential saving of original material and work, this almost-sentimental imitation of the old style and taste where patching in by modern hands was inevitable, which has produced a result and effect likely, we think, to arouse the admiration of all who relish the inimitable charm of antique time-mellowed work.

Never before, we may safely say, has the restoration of any historic public building been carried out with quite the same amount of loving care as has been lavished on Kensington Palace. The spirit has been rather that of a private owner reverentially restoring his ancestral home, than that of an ordinary public official, with an energy callous to all sentiment, sweeping away the old to replace it with a spick-and-span new building. This method of treatment has nowhere been applied more scrupulously, and we venture to think with greater success, than in the treatment of the old oak panelling and the beautiful carving, all of which had been covered over with numerous coats of paint, so long ago—we have discovered from the old accounts in the Record Office—as 1724. In the cleaning off of these dirty incrustations, various processes have been resorted to, as they suited the nature of the work, and so thoroughly has this been done that the closest inspection would give us no inkling that any part, either of the flat surface or of the most delicate carving, had ever been painted at all. Equal pains were taken in finishing the surface with oil and wax polish—no stain whatever being used on the panelling, doors or cornices—so that the real true colour of the wood is seen, varying only with its natural variation, and exhibiting all its richness of tone, and its fullness of grain. It makes one almost glad it should have suffered so many years of long neglect—that when at last it has been taken in hand, it should have been done when the historical significance and the technical and artistic value of such things are more truly appreciated than formerly. There can be little doubt that if an early nineteenth century upholsterer had got hold of this Palace, most of the beautiful old work would have been cleared out to make way for vulgar plaster-work of white and gold.

Substantially the same principles have been followed in the cleaning and restoration of the painted walls and ceilings, which work has been executed with the utmost sympathy for the old work, and the most careful efforts to preserve it. There has not been a touch of paint applied except to make good portions absolutely destroyed, so that these ceilings—whatever their merits or demerits—remain exactly as they were when first completed, save for the more subdued and modulated tone they have taken on from the softening hand of Time.

WORD should now be said about the pictures, which have been brought from various Royal residences to furnish these State Apartments, and to illustrate the history of this Palace. The bulk of them have come from Hampton Court, and a large number are pieces which were removed when the State Rooms were dismantled by George IV. and William IV., from the very walls where they now once again hang. Their return here from Hampton Court, in the overcrowded galleries of which it has been impossible ever properly to display them, has been a most auspicious thing for that Palace, and has rendered feasible many long-desired rearrangements and improvements.

In selecting the pictures which seemed most suitable for hanging at Kensington, the principle has been followed of restricting them almost entirely to portraits and historical compositions belonging to the epoch with which the Palace is connected—the reigns of William and Mary, Queen Anne, and the Georges, and, finally, of course that of Queen Victoria.

In the carrying out of this plan an endeavour has been made to group the pictures together in the various apartments as far as possible according to the periods to which they belong—making separate collections, at the same time, of the curious topographical subjects relating to “Old London,” in the Queen’s Closet; of the interesting series of Georgian sea-pieces, sea-fights, and dockyards, in the King’s Gallery—where for the first time they may now at last be really seen and examined—and the ceremonial and other pictures, relating to the Queen’s reign, in the “Presence Chamber” and the actual rooms originally occupied by Her Majesty in her youth.

Having given these general indications as to the arrangements, it will not be necessary to do more than refer to our subsequent pages for the details of the scheme. Nor need we dwell on what will at once be only too obvious to the connoisseur, that anyone who expects to behold in this Palace a fine collection of choice works of art will certainly be disappointed. Kneller and Zeeman, Paton and Pocock, Huggins and Serres, West and Beechey, are not exactly names to conjure with—nor even, indeed, Scott, Monamy, Drouais, or Hoppner, in their somewhat second-rate productions here. Moreover, it is to be clearly understood, that it is not as an Art Gallery that these rooms are opened to the inspection of the public, but as a Royal Palace, with pictures hung in it illustrative of its history and associations, and as furniture to its walls.

Nevertheless, it is not high art only, nor great imaginative works, which can interest and instruct; and, historically, these bewigged, ponderous, puffy personages of the unromantic eighteenth century, whose portraits decorate these walls, are more in accord with their setting, than would be the finer, simpler, and nobler creations of the great epochs of art.

N the other hand, the Victorian pictures, and the apartments in which they are arranged, stand apart on a different footing of their own. It is to the three small, plain and simple rooms, with their contents, in the south-eastern corner of the building, that all visitors to the Palace will turn with the liveliest interest, and with the keenest, the most thrilling emotion. Romance, and all the thoughts and feelings of tender, natural affection, which appear to have been smothered in the preceding century and a half of powder and gold-lace, seem to awaken and revive once more with the child born in this Palace eighty years ago, in the little girl playing about in these rooms and in these gardens, in the youthful Queen, who stepped forth from her simple chamber here to take possession of the greatest throne in the world!

It is as the scene of such memorable events that Kensington Palace possesses, and will hereafter ever possess, abiding interests and engrossing charms altogether its own; and that it will ever inspire, among those who come to visit it, thoughts and memories moving and deep. And not to us only in these islands; not to us only of this age; but to thousands and thousands likewise across the seas; to countless millions yet unborn, will this ancient structure become, now and in the ages yet to be, a revered place of loving pilgrimage as the birthplace and early home of Queen Victoria.

D E S C R I P T I V E A N D H I S T O R I C A L
G U I D E.

EFORE making our way to the public entrance to the state rooms of the Palace, let us take a glance at the history of the gardens lying round it, and the exterior of the building; and first as to the gardens on the east and south of the building. The whole ground here down to the highway was laid out quite early in the reign of William and Mary; but its present uninteresting appearance gives us but little idea of how it looked at that time. We find from the old accounts that large sums, amounting to several thousands of pounds, were expended on garden works—for levelling, gravelling, and planting, all in the formal Dutch style, with figured beds and clipped trees—and also much ornamental work, such as urns, stone vases, statues, and seats. There are, for instance, many items such as these:

“To Edward Pearce for carving a chaire for the garden with a canopy of drapery, £43 16s.; more for carving 4 chairs and 2 seats with Dolphins, scollop shells, etc., and other works done about the said gardens, £43 2s. 4d.—in both £86 18s. 4d.”

We have also a contemporary account of the gardens as formed by William and Mary, in a “View of the Gardens near London,” dated December, 1691: “Kensington Gardens are not great, nor abounding with fine plants. The orange, lemon, myrtle, and what other trees they had there in summer, were all removed to Mr. London’s and Mr. Wise’s greenhouse at Brompton Park, a little mile from them. But the walks and grass laid very fine; and they were digging up a flat of four or five acres to enlarge the garden.”

The northern boundary of King William’s gardens is marked by two piers of excellent red brickwork, evidently erected by Wren at that time. They are surmounted by very fine vases of carved Portland stone; and are perhaps two of the “Four great fflower-pots of Portland stone, richly carved,” for which, we find from the old bills, the statuary Gabriel Cibber, the father of Colley Cibber, was paid £187 5s. Between these piers, which stand 39 feet apart, there was probably, in old days, a screen and gates of fine wrought iron. They stand at the south end of what was called “Brazen Face Walk,” and between them the visitor passes to the public entrance to the Palace. The fencing in of this part of the gardens is perhaps referred to in the following entry belonging to the years 1692-95:

“William Wheatley for makeing and setting up Pallizadoes and gates in and about the said Palace—£152 5s. 10d.”

To the north of these piers lies the north-west corner of the now so-called “Kensington Gardens,” where were formerly situated that part of the old gardens appurtenant to the Palace, laid out by Queen Anne. The present bare uninteresting appearance of the ground round about is now entirely different from what it then was.

OWACK, in his “Antiquities of Middlesex,” writing in the reign of Queen Anne, in 1705, tells us of her improvements: “There is a noble collection of foreign plants and fine neat greens, which makes it pleasant all the year, and the contrivance, variety, and disposition of the whole is extremely pleasing, and so frugal have they been of the room they had, that there was not an inch but what is well improved, the whole with the house not being above twenty-six acres. Her Majesty has been pleased lately to plant near thirty acres more towards the north, separated from the rest by a stately green-house, not yet finished; upon this spot is near one hundred men daily at work, and so great is the progress they have made, that in less than nine months the whole is levelled, laid out, and planted, and when finished will be very fine. Her Majesty’s gardener had the management of this.” Of Queen Anne’s “stately green-house” we shall speak in a moment.

Addison, also, in No. 477 of the “Spectator,” expatiated on the beauties of the gardens: “Wise and London are our heroick poets; and if, as a critic, I may single out any passage of their works to commend, I shall take notice of that part in the upper garden, at Kensington, which was at first nothing but a gravel pit. It must have been a fine genius for gardening, that could have thought of forming such an unsightly hollow into so beautiful an area, and to have hit the eye with so uncommon and agreeable a scene as that which it is now wrought into.”

The cost of these improvements amounted to several thousands of pounds—in levelling, planting, turfing, gravelling. The appearance of the east and south gardens in the reign of Queen Anne will, as we have already said, best be conveyed by Kip’s plate; the general plan of the new enclosed garden to the north, north-east, and north-west, by Rocque’s engraving, published in 1736. From this we see that Queen Caroline, who embarked in so many gardening enterprises, left Queen Anne’s new gardens substantially intact; though she made a clean sweep of all the old fantastic figured flower beds and formal walks of William III.’s parterres to the south and east of the Palace; substituting therefor bare and blank expanses of lawn and wide gravel paths.

During the reigns of George III. and George IV. all the gardens were allowed to become more and more uncared for; and at last those to the north of the Palace were destroyed altogether. The “old Wilderness” and “old Gravel Pit” of Queen Anne and the early Georges now exist no longer—converted by an insane utilitarianism partly into park land, the rest into meadow.

The old gardens to the east, already flattened out and spoilt by Queen Caroline, now exist but in part; the small portion, which has not been covered with hideous forcing houses and frames, is, however, to a certain extent nicely shrubbed, and closed in by trees and hedges. The site of the old south gardens, curtailed now to a small enclosure, which retains little of the old English picturesque air, might with advantage, we think, be less stiff and bare. There is here little more than a clump or two of trees and shrubs, a wide gravel path, and two large vacant lawns, separated from the public walk by a wire fence, and between this and High Street mere expanses of grass. Fortunately, the devastating notions of the “landscape gardener” whose one idea was so to arrange the ground surrounding a house as to look as if it stood plump in the middle of a park—for all the world like a lunatic asylum—are not quite so much in favour as they were.

The blankness and barrenness of all the ground between the south front and the street was even more painfully apparent in Leigh Hunt’s time, who in his “Old Court Suburb” drew attention to this salient defect nearly fifty years ago. “The house,” he remarked, “nominally possesses ‘gardens’ that are miles in circumference.... There is room enough for very pleasant bowers in the spaces to the east and south, that are now grassed and railed in from the public path; nor would the look of the Palace be injured with the spectator, but rescued from its insipidity.” His suggestion has been acted on to a certain extent in recent times, but too partially in our view.

UEEN ANNE is the sovereign to whom we owe the erection of this exceedingly fine specimen of garden architecture—one of the most beautiful examples of the art of the Renaissance in London, if not in England. If we could say with truth that there ever was a “Queen Anne style,” this would, indeed, be a representative and unrivalled example of it—as it certainly is of Sir Christopher Wren’s, which, developing in the reign of Charles II., was definitely formed and fixed in that of William and Mary.

To an artist like Wren to beautify the ordinary and useful was to give expression to one of the highest functions of architecture; and therefore in this mere store-house for the Queen’s treasured plants and flowers, probably also a place where Queen Anne liked to sit and have tea, we have a building—unimportant though its object may be considered—which attains the very acme of his art, exhibiting all his well-balanced judgment of proportion, all the richness of his imagination in design.

The building of this greenhouse was begun in the summer of the year 1704. A plan, prepared by Sir Christopher at Queen Anne’s express orders, was submitted to and approved by her, and the original estimate, which is still in the Record Office, dated June 10th, 1704—probably drawn up by Richard Stacey, master bricklayer, and entitled: “For building a Greenhouse at Kensington” at a cost of £2,599 5s. 1d.—was accordingly laid before the officers of Her Majesty’s Works, Sir Christopher Wren, John Vanbrugh, Benjamin Jackson, and Matthew Bankes, for a report thereon. Their opinion, after “considering the measures and prices,” was that “it may be finished soe as not to exceed the sum therein expressed, viz., £2,599;” and the Lord Treasurer was accordingly prayed “to pay £2,000 into the Office of Works that it may be covered in before winter, according to Her Majesties expectation.”

The work was consequently put in hand forthwith, but there is some reason to suspect that Wren’s original intentions were departed from, and that the estimate approved by the Board of Works was afterwards cut down by the Treasury by a thousand pounds or so. This appears probable from the fact that Richard Stacey, the bricklayer who contracted for the work, and who, in a petition dated September 13th, was clamouring for payment of £800, on account of money then already disbursed by him, referred to that sum as part of a total of £1,560, “lately altered from the first estimate.”

Whether this is so or not, the details of the original estimate are interesting. The bricklayer’s charges came to £697; mason’s, to £102; “Glass windows, doors, and the window shutters, £340; Glazier for Crowne Glass, £74; Carpenter, £363,” etc.; added to which was: “More to be laid out the next year: The mason to pave it with stone fine-sanded, £246; more for stone steps to go up into it, £72; more for wainscoting and painting the Inside up to the top, £264.”

The last item is especially noteworthy, proving, as it does, that the woodwork was originally painted.

The beauty of Wren’s masterpiece of garden architecture seems to have been thoroughly appreciated in the time immediately succeeding its erection; but with the steady decline in taste during the Georgian epoch, it fell more and more into disregard, until, when the court deserted Kensington in 1760, it was abandoned to complete neglect. Britton and Brayley, writing in 1810 in their “Beauties of England,” refer to it regretfully: “The whole is now sinking into a state of unheeded decay.” Soon after this, however, it seems to have undergone some sort of repair, so, at least, wrote Faulkner, ten years after, who added: “It is now filled with a collection of His Majesty’s exotic plants.” He called it a “superb building,” and clearly regarded it with a much more appreciative eye than did its official guardians, who probably about this time perpetrated the barbarism of cutting windows in the north wall, right through the fine panelling and cornice!

Faulkner, nevertheless, was of course quite wrong in declaring, as he did, that “it was originally built by Queen Anne for a Banqueting House, and frequently used by Her Majesty as such.” There is absolutely no foundation whatever for either part of this statement, though it has often been repeated and was improved upon by Leigh Hunt, who asserted that “balls and suppers certainly took place in it.” Funny “balls” they must have been on the old brick floor! Hunt has nothing more to say of it than rather scornfully to call it “a long kind of out-house, never designed for anything else but what it is, a greenhouse.” In so great contempt, indeed, does it appear to have been held about this time, that it is said the idea was once seriously entertained by some official wiseacre of pulling it down and carting it away as rubbish! And this while the State was annually devoting hundreds of thousands of pounds to art education, art schools, art teachers, and art collections, leaving one of our most precious monuments to perish from decay! “Out-house” and “greenhouse” though it be, we would rather see it preserved than half the buildings of recent times.

Terrace of Queen Anne’s Orangery.

BEFORE examining the orangery in detail, let us stand a moment in front of it, on the terrace, platform, or estrade—by whichever name we may call it—of Portland stone, with steps going down from it in front and at both ends. Here formerly stood, in the summer, some of Queen Anne’s choicest exotics; and here Her Majesty doubtless often sat to have tea, gossiping with the Duchess of Marlborough or Abigail Hill. In front the steps led down into a formal parterre.

Now, however, the most prominent objects to the eye here, are the glass-houses, and the tops of the forcing frames, in which the whole stock for the bedding out in the park and gardens has been reared for the last thirty or forty years. It is truly an amazing thing that a piece of ground, situated as this is, close under the windows of the Palace, and opposite this orangery, should have been appropriated to so grossly disfiguring a use. This particular spot is the very last, one would have supposed, which would have been pitched on for the purpose. It will not be long, we trust, before the whole ground will be cleared, and devoted once more to an old-fashioned sunk formal garden, with such quaint devices as clipped shrubs, trimmed box, figured beds, sundials, leaden vases—such as still survive in many an old country house.

Nor do we see why such restorations should stop here, nor why much of the ground around the Palace should not be laid out in the old English style, with some, at any rate, of the many embellishments for which Evelyn pleaded as suitable for a royal garden: “Knots, trayle work, parterres, compartments, borders, banks, embossments, labyrinths, dædals, cabinets, cradles, close walks, galleries, pavilions, porticoes, lanthorns, and other relievos of topiary and horticulan architecture, fountaines, jettes, cascades, pisceries, rocks, grottoes, cryptæ, mounts, precipices, and ventiducts; gazon theatres, artificial echoes, automate and hydraulic music!”

Barring the last half dozen items, something in the antique formal style would, indeed, be a relief from the tedious monotony of modern “landscape” gardening.

Exterior of Queen Anne’s Orangery.

AS a specimen of an unaffectedly ornamented exterior of brick, this elevation to the south, aiming rather at simplicity and plain dignity than magnificence or grandeur, is to our view admirable.

In the centre is a compartment, more decoratively treated than the rest, with four rusticated piers or pillars of brick, supporting an entablature of the Doric order, mainly in stone. The cornice, though probably modelled on the original, must be modern, for it is in Roman cement, a material which did not come into use in England until about a hundred years ago; and it so happens that the date, 1805, has been found on part of the woodwork adjoining. Above the cornice, over the central window, or rather doorway, is a semi-circular window, apparently to give light into the roof. On each side of the central compartment are four high windows, with sashes filled with small panes; and at each end are slightly projecting wings, or bays, with window-doors, extra high, and reaching to the floor level, to admit tall-grown oranges and other plants. These are flanked by plain rusticated piers of bright red brick; beyond which are plain brick niches, with small brackets above them.

A very similar arrangement of windows and niches is repeated at the east and west return ends of the building; where, however, the large window is surmounted by a small semi-circular recess or panel, and the whole overhung by the deep, wide eave of the gable of the roof.

The total exterior length of the building is 171 feet, the width 32 feet.

Interior of Queen Anne’s Orangery.

IT is not, however, the exterior of this building, but the interior, which will arouse in those who behold it the greatest admiration, for it is here that we can appreciate Wren’s imaginative and constructive genius at its very best. The longer we know and contemplate it, the more supremely beautiful does it strike us, both in the mass and in its details. We will not describe it with any minuteness; but content ourselves with recording that the central portion of each wall, is treated more elaborately than the rest, being ornamented with Corinthian columns, supporting a richly carved entablature. The rest of the walls, both between the windows on the south side, and on the unbroken surface of the opposite north side, are panelled in deal wood, with beautiful carved cornices above. At each end, both east and west, there is an arch, flanked with panelled niches, and surmounted by festoons of Gibbons’ carving. These, we may observe in passing, proved, after being cleaned, to be so worm-eaten, as to necessitate their being repainted—mere staining not being sufficient to prevent their falling to pieces. They are now in fact, held together by the coatings of new paint.

The dimensions of this main portion of the interior are: 112 feet long and 24 feet wide between the brick walls, three inches less each way between the woodwork. The height to the ceiling is 24 feet 6 inches, and to the top of the cornice 22 feet 9 inches.

The Alcoves of Queen Anne’s Orangery.

FINE, however, as is the main and central portion of this interior, the alcoves, into which we pass through the arches at each end of it, impress us still more with their admirable proportions, their supreme grace of design, the exquisite beauty of their decorative detail.

Their shape is circular, with fluted Corinthian columns, supporting highly-carved architraves and cornices, and flanking the entrances, the windows opposite these and on the south, and the panelled spaces on the north wall. There are also intervening niches with semicircular heads, springing from richly carved imposts. The ceilings, which are circular, rising in coves from behind the cornices, are “saucer-domed.”

The dimensions of these alcoves are: east one, diameter, 24 feet, west one, 24 feet 4½ inches; height to the centre of the dome, 24 feet 2 inches, to the top of the cornice 20 feet.

Restoration of Queen Anne’s Orangery.

THE whole of this beautiful interior, however, now presents a very different appearance from what it did when taken in hand about a year ago.

This is how it was described in an interesting article in “The Times” on the 28th of January, 1898: “The exquisite interior has been the victim not merely of neglect, but of chronic outrage. For, as the little garden between this and the Palace has been found a convenient place on which to put up the glasshouses, frames and potting-sheds necessary for the park gardeners, what more natural, to the official eye, than that the Orangery close by should be pressed into the same service? Accordingly, at some time or other, which cannot have been very many years ago, more than half the beautiful high panelling of this building was torn down and has disappeared, the gardeners’ stands have been let into the walls, and there the daily work has proceeded with no thought that it was daily desecration.”

The work of restoring all these beautiful carvings, which has been in progress during the last fifteen months, has now put an entirely different aspect on this interior, and not in vain has every piece of old carving been treasured up, cleaned, repaired, and patched in, with scrupulous care.

When this work was completed, the question arose, whether the woodwork was to be all painted over white, as it doubtless originally was, or merely lightly stained. White painting would, perhaps, have been artistically, as well as archæologically, the preferable course. But it was thought that white paint, in the smoky, foggy atmosphere of modern Kensington, and with the clouds of dust particles from the tread of numberless visitors, would soon take on the dirty tinge of London mud; and thus have required such frequent renewal as eventually to choke up again all the sharpness of the delicate chiselling of the foliated capitals, architraves and cornices.

The decision eventually come to, therefore, was to stain it, with a tone of colour like oak, which gives full prominence and clearness to the carved surfaces. This staining alone, apart from the previous cleaning, has involved no less than eight distinct processes: (1) washing down; (2) vinegaring over to take out lime stains; (3) the same repeated; (4) sizing to keep the stain from penetrating the wood; (5) the same repeated; (6) staining; (7) varnishing; (8) flat-varnishing.

HE modern so-called “Kensington Gardens” are, as we have already explained, identical with the original domain of old Nottingham House, increased by the addition of some hundred acres or more taken from Hyde Park. When William III. first acquired the Nottingham estate he appointed his favourite, Bentinck, Earl of Portland, “Superintendent of Their Majesties’ Gardens and Plantations within the boundary lines of Their Majesties’ said house at Kensington”—an office distinct from that of Ranger of Hyde Park—and some planting and other improvements seem to have been carried out at that time in these “plantations.”

Queen Anne’s inclosure of a hundred acres from Hyde Park to form a paddock for deer we have already noted.

Faulkner’s exaggerated statement that nearly three hundred acres were taken in and added to Kensington Gardens by Queen Caroline has been confuted by Mr. Loftie; but he has gone to the other extreme in declaring that no alteration whatever was, at any time, made in the boundary between the park and the gardens. Nevertheless, it is still doubtful whether Queen Caroline is to be held responsible for any “rectification” of these frontiers. The reference already quoted, in the Treasury Papers of the year 1729, for an allowance of £200 to the ranger “in consideration of loss of herbage of that part of the said park, which is laid into His Majesty’s gardens at Kensington,” may of course refer to the portion previously taken in by Queen Anne.

Queen Caroline’s Improvements in Kensington Gardens.

TO Queen Caroline, however, is certainly due the main credit of the creation of Kensington Gardens, as we now know them; for it was her reforming and transforming zeal which made the great “Basin” or “Round Pond;” turned a string of small ponds, in the course of the “West Bourne,” into the Serpentine; laid out the “Broad Walk,” and designed the diverging and converging vistas and avenues of trees intersecting the grounds in all directions.

In all these extensive works of improvement Charles Bridgeman, the King’s gardener, was employed; and we find from the old Treasury Minute Book that in 1729 no less a sum than £5,000 was due to him “for works in the paddock and gardens at Kensington.”

About the same date, Queen Caroline, during one of George II.’s absences in Hanover, issued an order that:

“The King’s ministers being very much incommoded by the dustiness of the road leading through Hyde Park, now they are obliged to attend Her Majesty at Kensington, it was her pleasure that the whole of the said road be kept constantly watered, instead of the ring in the Park; and that no coaches other than those of the nobility and gentry be suffered to go into or pass through the Park.”

Kensington Gardens in the Nineteenth Century.

AT that period the gardens were opened to the public only on Saturdays, when the company appeared in full dress. This was the time of the great fashionable promenade. During the reign of George III. they were opened every day in the week, summer and winter, under certain regulations, “and the number of the gatekeepers,” says Faulkner, writing in 1819, “have lately been increased, who are uniformly clothed in green.” He adds: “The great South Walk, leading to the Palace, is crowded on Sunday mornings in the spring and summer with a display of all the beauty and fashion of the great metropolis, and affords a most gratifying spectacle, not to be equalled in Europe.”

In the middle of this century the tide of fashion set back towards Rotten Row and Hyde Park Corner; and Kensington Gardens have, for the last sixty or eighty years, been very little frequented by the “world.” Their attractions, however, have not suffered on this account in the view of the poet, the artist, and the lover of nature. “Here in Kensington,” wrote Haydon the painter, “are some of the most poetical bits of trees and stump, and sunny brown and green glens and tawny earth.”

But it is not within the scope of these pages, confined as they are to topics directly connected with Kensington Palace as a new public resort, to describe these two hundred and fifty acres of delightful verdant lawns, sylvan glades, and grassy slopes. We must resist the temptation, therefore, to wander away into the attractive prospect, which unfolds itself beneath our gaze when looking out from the windows of the state rooms, or into which we can saunter when we quit the Palace. Moreover, their charms, as they were and are, have been drawn by too many master hands—by Tickell, Leigh Hunt, Thackeray, Disraeli—to encourage any attempt at their description here. In our own day they have still been the favourite resort of many a jaded Londoner, in which to snatch a few hours of quiet and repose, out of the whirl of the great city around. Matthew Arnold’s charming poem, “Lines written in Kensington Gardens,” will occur to many, especially that stanza:

“In this lone open glade I lie,
Screen’d by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end to stay the eye,
Those black-crown’d, red-boled pine trees stand.”

E may look upon this façade as architecturally the most interesting portion of the existent Palace of Kensington, for it shows us the exterior almost exactly as finished by Wren for William and Mary, about the year 1691. While unpretentious and plain, it is well and solidly built, and altogether appropriate to the purpose which it was intended to serve, namely, that of a comfortable, homely, suburban residence for the King and Queen and the court.

The long lower building of two main storeys, in deep purple-red brick, to the left, forms the south range of the chief courtyard; and there is every reason to believe that it is a part of the original Nottingham House, altered and improved by Wren. The loftier building, to the right, of three storeys, in bright red brick, is unquestionably entirely Wren’s, and in the old accounts is referred to as “the new Gallery Building.” All the windows on the top or second floor here, except the two on the extreme right, are those of the “King’s Gallery” (described on page 117). The floor beneath consisted, and consists, of the sovereign’s private apartments. The four fine carved vases of Portland stone, surmounting the four pilasters of the same, are probably those mentioned in the old accounts as carved by Gabriel Cibber for £787 5s.

Wren’s Domestic Style.

THOSE who are at all acquainted with Wren’s style and inclinations will not be surprised at the marked plainness of his work here—so little accordant with ordinary pompous preconceived notions of what befits a regal dwelling-house. In planning habitable buildings we find he always mainly considered use and convenience—adapting his external architectural effects to the exigencies of his interiors. Ever ready, indeed, to devote the full range of his great constructive genius to the commonest works, rendering whatever he designed a model for the use to which it was to be put, he was, in these respects, essentially a “builder” before all; not only a designer of elevations and a drawer of plans, but a practical worker, thinking nothing useful beneath his notice. There was, in fact, nothing of the lofty, hoity-toity architect about him; on the contrary, absorbed with questions of adaptability and convenience; searching into details of material and workmanship; we find him in his seat at the head of the Board of Works rigorously testing, sifting and discussing estimates, values, specifications and “quantities.” It is due to this side of his mind that so much of his work has endured intact to this day; while we owe it to his positive intuitive genius for rendering his creations well-proportioned and dignified, as well as convenient and comfortable; to his wonderful skill in arranging positions, sizes, and shapes to meet the exigencies of light and air, that his houses still remain so habitable, and are distinguished by so homelike an air.

HIS aspect of Kensington Palace, which we almost hesitate to dignify with the name of “Front” consists mainly of two distinct portions: first, the “return” or end of Wren’s “Gallery Building,” on the left, distinguished by its fine red brickwork and its deep cornice, similar to the same on the south side; and on the right, the building tacked on to it, built for George I. by Kent, as already mentioned on [page 23], and further referred to on pages 86, 93, and 99. We must frankly say—and few are likely to differ from us—that Kent’s building here is about as ugly and inartistic as anything of the sort could be. It is not alone the common, dirty, yellow, stock brick with which it is built, but the whole shape and design, with its pretentious pediment, ponderous and hideous, the prototype of acres upon acres of ghastly modern London structures in the solid “workhouse” style. It is amazing that Kent, with so excellent a model of plainness and simplicity in Wren’s buildings on each side, should have stuck in this ill-formed, abortive block between them. Fortunately, his taste as a decorator was greatly superior to his powers as an architect, so that the interior portions of this building of his, which consists of additional state-rooms, are not entirely deficient in merit, as we shall see. The three central windows are those of the “King’s Drawing Room,” (see [page 99]).

To the north-west of the structure comprising Kent’s state apartments lies another of the older parts of the Palace, a low building of two storeys, in deep russet brick, of uniform appearance, with fifteen windows in a row on the first floor. This range, built, or, at any rate, altered and improved by Wren, and forming the east side of Princess’s Court, comprises the state and habitable rooms of Queen Mary and Queen Anne. At its extreme north end is the “Queen’s Staircase,” now the public entrance to the state rooms.

CCESS to the state rooms open to the public being by way of the “Queen’s” or “Denmark Staircase,” situated in the northernmost angle of the building, visitors approach it from the north-west corner of “Kensington Gardens,” where, as we have already explained, were formerly situated those parts of the old formal gardens attached to the Palace, which were laid out by Queen Anne, called the “Old Gravel Pit,” the “Wilderness,” etc. The path here, leading straight up to the present public entrance, was then known as “Brazen-face Walk.” Going along it southwards, we pass between a pair of fine gate-posts of red brick, surmounted by richly-carved vases of Portland stone, evidently designed by Wren, already referred to in our account of “Old Kensington Palace Gardens” on page 48; and then between a privet hedge and a wire fence up to the public doorway into the “Queen’s Staircase.”

This doorway, on the north wall, is very commonplace; with a porch in the later Georgian style, consisting of a couple of pillars of Portland stone, glazed between, and supporting a hood above.

Round the corner, however, on the east wall, is a very different doorway, both interesting and picturesque. It is the one which originally gave access to the staircase, and was designed and built by Sir Christopher Wren, probably in the year 1691. The space within the hood or circular pediment above the door is filled with beautiful stone carving, in the centre of which is a shield or panel bearing the initials W. M. R. Above this is a brick niche with a bracket, on which stands an old urn or flower-pot. Something very similar probably stood here formerly, and was thus charged for in the old parchment accounts for the years 1689-91:

“Henry Long for a large vase of earth (terra-cotta) wrought with handles and festoons painted with gilt £6 10s.”

HIS forms the entrance by which the public are admitted into the State Rooms. Built by Sir Christopher Wren for Queen Mary on the “Queen’s Side” of the Palace, it was called the “Queen’s Staircase,” while being situated in that part of the Palace which was at one time occupied by Queen Anne and her husband, Prince George of Denmark, it has also been occasionally known as the “Denmark Staircase,” as this portion of the building itself has been called the “Denmark Wing.”

In the view of the ordinary Londoner, with eye too much dazzled and demoralized by the tawdry vulgarities of the over-gilded, over-looking-glassed, blazing, modern “Restaurant” style of decoration, this beautiful staircase, in its just proportions and its subdued simplicity, may appear plain, if not mean.

Yet as an example of the genuine, unaffected old English treatment of oak wainscoting, as a cover and ornament to large wall spaces, nothing could be more pleasing and more appropriate. The deep rich, almost ruddy, tone of colour of the wood, the admirable proportion and balance of the stiles and rails to the sizes of the panels, their adjustment to the rise of the stairs, and their fitment to the various spaces on the walls, produce an effect of soundness and comfort, most admirable and nowhere to be matched.

Old Oak Wainscoting of the Staircase.

WHEN the work of cleaning down this woodwork was taken in hand last autumn, it was, as the phrase is, “as black as your hat;” and it was then supposed to have been smeared over, at some time or other, with a black stain. It proved, however, to be only ingrained with dirt and dust, which had been coated over with red-lead and boiled oil, and which quickly yielded to cleansing.

Nevertheless, the oak is not English, but probably Norwegian, which seems to be richer in the grain than our own native tree. It is clear that the wood must have been carefully cut in such a way as to show as much “figure” as possible—the cuttings being, with this distinct object, as nearly as possible radiating from the centre of the trunk of the tree—the “medullary rays” of the wood being, in fact, sliced through, instead of intersected transversely. This has the effect of displaying the largest amount of the grain.

Window Sashes of the Staircase.

THE visitor should notice the difference in the sashes of the two windows on the left-hand side of the stairs as you go up, as compared with the other two on the landing at the top. The first two windows have had large panes of glass—2 feet 1 inch high by 1 foot 2½ inches wide—and thin bars, substituted for the original smaller panes—12½ inches high by 9½ inches wide—and the thick moulded bars, which still remain in the landing windows. This side by side comparison enables us to estimate how deplorable and stupid was the want of taste, which led to the destruction here, as elsewhere in this Palace, of the picturesque, well-proportioned spacings of the window panes, to insert instead ill-proportioned panes and thin bars.

Not until the time of George II. did this foolish, inartistic fancy come into vogue. Wren, of course, knew what he was about when he selected the sizes of the spaces and bars. He determined them on definite principles of scale and proportion, according to the sashes they were intended to fill, and according, also, to the dimensions of the room, and the plan and shape of the surrounding wainscot. He had, in fact, eight or ten different types of sashes—the mouldings, as well as the widths and sizes of the bars varying, and the shapes of the panes—square or upright—varying also; not like your ingenious modern builder, who runs out “mouldings” at so much a foot, mitres them up into equal spaces, and, regardless of scale and proportion, sticks in the same sized sashes, panes, and bars everywhere, in large lofty rooms or small low ones—all alike.

The dimensions of this staircase are 24 feet 3 inches long by 22 feet 10 inches wide, and 25 feet high.