Never before, we may safely say, has the restoration of any historic public building been carried out with quite the same amount of loving care as has been lavished on Kensington Palace. The spirit has been rather that of a private owner reverentially restoring his ancestral home, than that of an ordinary public official, with an energy callous to all sentiment, sweeping away the old to replace it with a spick-and-span new building. This method of treatment has nowhere been applied more scrupulously, and we venture to think with greater success, than in the treatment of the old oak panelling and the beautiful carving, all of which had been covered over with numerous coats of paint, so long ago--we have discovered from the old accounts in the Record Office--as 1724. In the cleaning off of these dirty incrustations, various processes have been resorted to, as they suited the nature of the work, and so thoroughly has this been done that the closest inspection would give us no inkling that any part, either of the flat surface or of the most delicate carving, had ever been painted at all. Equal pains were taken in finishing the surface with oil and wax polish--no stain whatever being used on the panelling, doors or cornices--so that the real true colour of the wood is seen, varying only with its natural variation, and exhibiting all its richness of tone, and its fullness of grain. It makes one almost glad it should have suffered so many years of long neglect--that when at last it has been taken in hand, it should have been done when the historical significance and the technical and artistic value of such things are more truly appreciated than formerly. There can be little doubt that if an early nineteenth century upholsterer had got hold of this Palace, most of the beautiful old work would have been cleared out to make way for vulgar plaster-work of white and gold. Substantially the same principles have been followed in the cleaning and restoration of the painted walls and ceilings, which work has been executed with the utmost sympathy for the old work, and the most careful efforts to preserve it. There has not been a touch of paint applied except to make good portions absolutely destroyed, so that these ceilings--whatever their merits or demerits--remain exactly as they were when first completed, save for the more subdued and modulated tone they have taken on from the softening hand of Time. =Arrangement of the Pictures.=