My next visit was to Hampton Court, for which I found a day quite insufficient, when reduced to the actual hours which one is permitted to devote to the survey of such a wilderness of natural and artificial charms, and to the enjoyment of their historical interest. In the grounds of the palace, and in Bushy Park, I found a formal grandeur, so entirely becoming a past age, and so unusual in this, that it impressed me with feelings of melancholy the most profound. Those avenues of chestnuts and thorns, those massive colonnades and dreamy vistas, wear a desolate and dreary aspect of by-gone glory, in view of which my spirits could not rise. They seemed only a fit haunt for airy echoes, repeating an eternal _Where?_ Nothing later than the days of Queen Anne seems to belong to the spot. You pass from scenes in which you cannot but imagine Pope conceiving, for the first time, his “Rape of the Lock,” into a more trim and formal spot, where William of Orange seems likely to appear before you, with Bishop Burnet buzzing about him, and a Dutch guard following in the rear. Then again, James the Second, with the Pope’s nuncio at his elbow, and a coarse mistress flaunting at his side, might seem to promise an immediate apparition; when once more the scene changes, and the brutal Cromwell is the only character who can be imagined in the forlorn area, with a file of musketeers in the back-ground, descried through a shadowy archway. Here is a lordly chamber where the meditative Charles may be conceived as startled by the echo of their tread; and here another, where he embraces, for the last time, his beloved children. There, at last, is Wolsey’s Hall, and here one seems to behold old Blue-beard leading forth Anne Boleyn to a dance. It still retains its ancient appearance, and is hung with mouldering tapestry and faded banners, although its gilding and colors have been lately renewed. The ancient devices of the Tudors are seen here and there, in windows and tracery, and the cardinal’s hat of the proud churchman, who projected the splendors of the place, still survives, in glass, whose brittle beauty has thus proved less perishable than his worldly glory.