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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 enoughsome 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

dators of each other. There is a painting here, for example, of Charles I. and his Queen dining in public, which has some such value. The custom of the sovereign dining in public is often referred to, and consequently well-known; but a much livelier idea of it is obtained when we see it thus "done from the life." And this very queen we can look at with more interest here, when we read the following naïve passage from the autobiography of that stiff old Puritan, Sir Simonds D'Ewes :

"On Thursday, the 30th and last day of this instant June (1625), I went to Whitehall purposely to see the Queen; which I did fully all the time she sat at dinner, and perceived her to be a most absolute delicate lady, after I had exactly surveyed all the features of her face, much enlivened by her radiant and sparkling black eye. Besides, her deportment amongst her women was so sweet and humble, and her speech and looks to her other servants so mild and gracious, as I could not abstain from divers deep-fetched sighs to consider that she wanted the knowledge of the true religion." Doubtless many a one hastened, like Sir Simonds, to Whitehall when the King brought home his young bride, and many, like him, looked on her with some such mingled feelings of horror and admiration. Puritanism was already strong and flourishing..

Of the general collection of pictures as it now stands the most marked feature (though one is a little disposed to question whether this popular resort is just the most fitting place for their exhibition) is perhaps the Gallery of the Beauties of King Charles II., who have been banished here from Windsor. How thoroughly do they illustrate that time and Court; his, happily, the only time, and

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that the only Court, in which such a number of the noblest of the ladies of England would have suffered themselves to be painted in such a fashion. Grammont has hardly set them more vividly before us than they are here displayed on the somewhat frigid canvas of Lely; and they add to Grammont's stories more of vraisemblance than even his biographer's Hiberno-Gallic fire, and facility of touch. It is almost too much to say, by the way, that English ladies would not at any other time, or in any other Court, allow themselves to be exhibited as King Charles's beauties did, while we have here before us Kneller's paintings of the Beauties of the Court of King William. There is, however, a sufficient distinction. These fair dames evidently do their best to be thought as graceless as those they desired to rival; but in vain; they have not the heart for it. Their effort to appear impudent, only makes them look silly.

Holbein's portraits, of which there are several here, are of a different and greater value. Wanting, as he did, almost all the higher qualities of the artist, the literal truth of his portraiture is astonishing. He has been styled the Daguerre of Limners, but the title is not appropriate. From Daguerreotype portraits, with all their minute and ghastly accuracy, the mental stamp, somehow, invariably escapes. Holbein gives the veritable man; intellectual with the physical head. Still, truthful as are the portraits of Holbein, they are true only as the dry delineations of the scientific naturalist are true. The portrait of Henry VIII., in his old age, coarse, selfish, brutal, dehumanized; and that of his royal rival, Francis I., are memorable productions; but the prodigious superiority of the

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representations of real genius becomes at once felt on passing from them to the Charles I. of Vandyke, in which, as in the finer portraits of Titian and Raphael, the man himself is brought before us, as he stood revealed before the mind's eye of the great painter. The portrait of Charles is a valuable historic study. This portrait again may be compared with another equestrian portrait -that of William III. by Kneller: the grand masculine simplicity of treatment in the one being a striking contrast to the feeble puerile allegory of the other. Zucchero's portrait of Elizabeth, in her dress of pearls, is a curiosity, but it also is a curious historical document; and a similar remark may be made on the portrait of her by Lucas de Heere, in which she is represented as throwing Juno, Venus, and Minerva into a panic, as she steps forth in the plenitude of her majesty, beauty, and wisdom. Vainly would the fantastic descriptions of the writers of that day present the queen to us in her extravaganza habits, were it not for some such faithful yet unconsciously grotesque They are only to be portrait of the Scottish

commentaries as these. paralleled by Mytens' Solomon at Knole.

There are also portraits by Titian and Velasquez of some of the potentates of their time; and others, by lesser artists, of men of notable fame-some mainly of national, but many of general historic value and importance. But we must on. There are several paintings of artistic value among the miscellaneous collection, but, probably, with the exception of the works of recent artists, by far the greater part of them are not genuine. Several are, no doubt, original works, but of artists of less

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