Illustrations, ii. 411,) says, " My Lord, the Queen is so well as, I assure you, six or seven galliards in a morning, besides music and singing, is her ordinary exercise." And Lysons tells us that it was here, some seven years later, that Anthony Rudd, Bishop of St. David's, incurred her serious displeasure by preaching a sermon before herself and court on the infirmities of age; in the course of which he noticed how "age had furrowed her face, and besprinkled her hair with its meal". -a somewhat perilous allusion, as the preacher might have known. Perhaps he would have been more scrupulous had he heard of her advice to the painter, "not to make any shadows in her face." Here, too, on the 24th of March, 1603, occurred the death-bed scene that all our historians have related so fully, when she sturdily protested she would have 66 no rascal" to succeed her-by which protestation her ministers understood her to imply that she wished for Jamie of Scotland to be her successor.

With the politic queen the glory of Richmond Palace departed. Once or twice her successors visited it, but the visits were few and transient ; and when the Parliament had obtained the ascend

ancy, the building was dismantled. A very elaborate survey was made of it by the Parliamentary Commissioners, who valued the materials at 10,7827. 19s. 2d. Fuller, in his 'Worthies,' speaks of it as 66 being now plucked down ;" but, however dilapidated, a good portion of it must have remained; for at the Restoration some part was in a sufficiently perfect state to be appropriated to the use of the widow of Charles I., who continued to reside in it till 1665.

Of this splendid pile a little, and but a little, is yet left. The site is almost entirely covered with modern dwelling-houses; but a vestige of the palace remains. The visitor will see on the west side of Richmond Green a rude-looking stone gatehouse, above the arch of which is an escutcheon containing the arms and supporters of Henry VII., so much defaced, however, as to be scarcely decipherable. Passing through this gateway, he will then observe on his left hand a building, consisting of some apartments, and a turret, constructed of red brick with stone dressings and battlements. They have suffered somewhat from time, but more from the alterations necessary to adapt them to the requirements of a modern dwelling-house. There is nothing now observable in these rooms, which are small, and have all undergone alteration. According to the local tradition, the room over the gateway is that in which the Countess of Nottingham died, after the interview with Elizabeth in which she confessed to having kept back the ring which Essex, when under sentence of death, had intrusted to her to deliver to the Queen.

The Green was an important adjunct to the palace-in whose palmy days it was the scene of the jousts and tournaments that then occurred so often. Horace Walpole, writing to Sir Horace Mann, on the 4th June, 1749, gives a singular notice of the lordly contests which, in the eighteenth century, had succeeded the tournaments of the sixteenth" As I passed over the Green, I saw Lord Bath, Lord Lonsdale, and half-a-dozen more of the White's club, sauntering at the door of a house which they have taken there, and come to every Saturday and Sunday to play at whist.

You will naturally ask why they can't play at whist in London on those two days as well as on the other five: indeed I can't tell you, except that it is so established a fashion to go out of town at the end of the week, that people do go, though it be only into another town. It made me smile to see Lord Bath sitting there, like a citizen that has left off trade !"

In this nineteenth century the only games it witnesses are games of cricket.

The Park belonging to the palace lies a little northward of the Green, extending to Kew Gardens. It was known as the Old or Little Park, and is sometimes called the Lower Park. The Lodge stood in this park. It was occasionally employed as a residence by George II.; and it was the favourite abode of Queen Caroline, with whom the adorning of Richmond Gardens became quite a hobby. In addition to costly alterations in the grounds, she caused several fantastic buildings to be erected. There was a dairy in which all the utensils were of china, with every thing else answerable. There were also pavilions and summerhouses; a hermitage with busts of Newton, Locke, and other men of famous memory, and, elevated above the rest as president of the society, Robert Boyle, having the head surrounded with golden rays; a building with busts, by Rysbrack, of the English kings; a menagerie with beasts-and so forth. But the most eminent structure was 66 a circular thatched building in the Gothic taste, called Merlin's Cave!" On this were lavished all the resources of regal taste and courtly art. Inside it Merlin himself sat at a table examining his magical books; while the consort of Henry VII., Henry

VIII., Queen Elizabeth and her nurse, and the Queen of the Amazons, were waiting to learn the issue of his inquiries. These figures, all in proper costume, were in wax-work, and were executed by Mrs. Salmon-the Madame Tussaud of that day. When the Queen discovered a natural genius in Stephen Duck, the poetic thresher, she made of him-however little like a conjuror—a living Merlin and 'Genius of the Cave:' providing him also with a small library and an annuity of thirty pounds. The King looked with small complacency on the artistic occupation of his spouse: when she tried to avert a tirade he was commencing against her " nonsense there," by telling him that the 'Craftsman,' a paper his Majesty had a mortal antipathy to, had abused Merlin's Cave, he interrupted her in his ordinary polite way with "I am glad of it, you deserve to be abused for such childish silly stuff, and it is the first time I ever knew the scoundrel in the right."

The memory of Merlin's Cave is embalmed by Pope and others whose works will live. Pope and Swift, however, let their satire fall on poor Duck, whom it was real cruelty to satirize. He was a man of but feeble powers, yet it was his misfortune, not his fault, that he was so ludicrously "elevated." There can be little doubt that he was better employed in threshing corn than when he turned "to thresh his brains,” and so

66

Threshing stubble,

His toil was lessen'd, and his profits double."

Like Clare in our own day, his removal from the barn to the study was the beginning of sorrow -and the end, lunacy.

Sir Walter Scott makes the interview of Jeanie Deans with Queen Caroline to have taken place in the Great Park-perhaps from not remembering that the Queen's Lodge was situated in the Lower Park. The inaccuracy, however, may have been intentional, for the sake of introducing the very characteristic notice of the view from the hill, which Jeanie could have had no opportunity of seeing if she had gone to the Lower Park.

George III. lived for awhile in the Queen's Lodge in the early part of his reign. One of the first changes made by him was to call in Capability Brown to remodel the park and gardens. Brown made clean work of all Caroline's prettinesses. “He broke the avenues," says an enthusiastic admirer, "rooted up the long lines of dressed hedges; gave the woods a natural shape; unveiled extensive lawns; destroyed by a superior magic Merlin and his cave; dilapidated every tasteless building; formed plantations"-in short, removed one species of once fashionable landscape gardening, to substitute another of a newer fashion and equally ungraceful. Brown's day is gone by; whether the fashion which has succeeded be truer or more lasting, a future generation must decide. The Lodge was pulled down in 1776. Richmond Gardens were united with those of Kew at the commencement of the present century.

On a spot of ground now included within the limits of the Old Park, and marked by some ancient trees, and a slight unevenness of the surface, once stood a famous religious establishment-the priory of Sheen, which was founded by Henry V. in 1414, for the support of forty monks of the Carthusian order, whom he incorporated by the name