Monk Lewis, writing in 1834, says: “The Government House is a large clumsy-looking brick building with a portico, the stucco of which has suffered by the weather, and it can advance no pretensions to architectural beauty.” And with this criticism one must fain agree. In Long’s time a new governor was usually feasted for three successive days in Spanish Town; after which he was wont to make a kind of public entry into Kingston, where more festivities were got up in his honour—the two towns vying the one with the other; and Lady Nugent, in her Journal, makes many references to gay doings in King’s House, Spanish Town. During the reign of Queen Victoria, King’s House—in common with its younger rival in the plain of Liguanea—remained King’s House, and did not permanently change its name to Queen’s House, as did the official residences of other British colonies, although in 1840 the House of Assembly alluded to the Queen’s House. With the removal of the seat of Government the remaining glory departed from Spanish Town. With the exception of the year 1873, when it was utilised for a little more than twelve months by Queen’s College, of which Grant Allen was one of the staff, and the occupation by a temporary tenant of recent years, King’s House has been practically empty. Jamaica’s former capital is like one of her bridges, which now and again, through the change of a rivercourse, is left to span a dry passage. In the palmy days of old the lot of a governor and his wife could not have been altogether a happy one. Lady Nugent writes, under date August 3, 1801, soon after their arrival in the island: