wealth and their taste, are at the same time such as to produce the most pleasing impression on the eye. In length it is one hundred and six feet, in breadth forty, in height sixty feet. The lofty walls support a richly carved, open, oak roof, of very elaborate design, which has lately been painted and gilt with more than its original brilliancy. At the farther end of the hall is the dais-the platform carried across the room and raised a step above the rest of the floor, where at the high-board sat the lord of the house with his chief guests. On the south side of the dais is a splendid bay-window. Across the lower end is a screen of carved oak, which supports the music-gallery. Along the sides of the room are twelve windows reaching from the roof half-way down the walls; at the west end is another window. All the windows are filled with stained glass, representing the bearings and quarterings of Henry and his half-dozen wives, and also the arms and offices of the Cardinal; the whole being further set off with proper supporters and appropriate inscriptions. The painted glass is entirely from the studio of Mr. Willement, the painter of glass par excellence of our time; and the harmonious arrangement of the colours serves well to subdue the light, that before was rather glaring, and to chasten somewhat the formerly too vivid colours of the blazonings of the roof. The walls of the hall are hung with the designs in tapestry that adorned them at first, and though darkened and faded by time, they are none the less interesting. The arras in the hall represents various circumstances in the life of Abraham: that under the music-gallery, allegories of the Virtues with the opposing Vices; and if they are not to be greatly

admired as works of art, they are not to be despised even in that respect.

At present the furniture in the hall consists mainly of a few modern chairs; it would be a vast improvement if a high-board and state seat of the proper style were placed on the dais, and long tables and forms ranged down the sides of the hall. These, with a pavement of encaustic tiles, and a good-sized andiron on a central hearth, would at once restore the hall to its primal appearance, and enable the least imaginative visitor to realize with little mental exertion a royal hall of the Tudor era. Adjoining the hall, and forming an admirable pendant to it, is the withdrawing-room. The walls of this room are also hung with tapestry, but of inferior design to that in the hall. In this room is another bay-window, of great beauty, and of very uncommon form, being semicircular. From the hall you pass by the " King's Grand Staircase' to the State Apartments, all of which form part of the modern building. The walls of the staircase are covered with the detestable allegories of Verrio's manufacturing, and similar perpetrations deface the ceilings of the rooms to which it leads; but this one notice may suffice for all these abominations, which are alike offensive to the sight, corruptive of the taste, and nauseating to the imagination;-would that some cleanly churchwarden or Scotch Covenanter might have uncontrolled charge of them for a week or two, and free permission to use the white-wash brush!

It will not be expected that I should go through the whole suite of state apartments, describing them and jotting down their contents. They will very well bear to be left to the visitor's own considera

tion, and whatever he may desire to know further about them, he will find amply told in the guidebooks which he may purchase of the attendants. Suffice it that the rooms appear stately enough— some of them at least, but very uncomfortable, and so inconvenient, that one wonders how they could have been endured as dwelling-places. Each room contains a great number of paintings; and almost every one has some upholstery of the time of William, Anne, or George, that is more or less worth noticing. And from each room there is a view over the gardens, the broad placid river, and the distant Surrey hills, that should by no means be passed unobserved. Indeed, it is one of the pleasantest things in a visit here, to sit awhile, if the room be not crowded, in one of these window-seats, and let the eye, which is growing fatigued with dwelling so long on the gaud and glitter of art, refresh itself by resting on the soft verdure and gentle features of nature. The pictures will be returned to with quite a new pleasure.

With a passing glance, then, at the general collection of pictures, we will proceed at once to the glory of Hampton-the Cartoons

of the

greatest of painters. The paintings in these state apartments are a strange miscellaneous assemblage, huddled together with little more regard to arrangement or classification than in an Academy exhibition; and named with as little regard to authenticity as in a broker's shop or an auctioneer's saleroom. Titians and Bogdanes, mock Giorgiones and genuine Kalfs, Venuses and war-hulks, dead game and martyred saints, are mingled together in a way that is as wearisome as it is confusing. The rooms of Hampton Court appear to have

become a refuge for pictures of suspected character, or unpleasant appearance, from our other royal dwellings; and perhaps the greater part are worthless. Still there might be selected from them a really pleasing collection. It might be made, indeed, singularly interesting and instructive, were the pictures (as has been once or twice suggested) to be arranged historically. There are many historical portraits of undoubted authenticity; were they properly classified, and good copies added of others, so as to render the series tolerably complete, several rooms might be fitted up that would be both interesting and valuable, and it might be done without a large outlay. Besides

the portraits, there are several pictures of historical subjects-I mean contemporary pictures or nearly so-such as the Battle of Spurs, Henry the Eighth's embarkation at Dover, the Field of the Cloth of Gold, Sir Henry Wotton presenting his Credentials as Ambassador to the Doge of Venice in the Senate, and the like, which might be brought together, and others added as opportunities occurred. The collection of portraits in the Queen's Gallery may be pointed to as an example of what might be done-though not exactly as an example of how it should be done.

Even contemporary pictures which are not directly historical, but still represent some incident connected with historical personages, have an interest when attention is directed to them, beyond that of their artistic worth (which is often exceedingly small), as illustrating the public or domestic manners of the time, or showing the habits and appliances of the actors;-the writers and painters thus mutually serving as commentators or eluci