In the middle of this century the tide of fashion set back towards Rotten Row and Hyde Park Corner; and Kensington Gardens have, for the last sixty or eighty years, been very little frequented by the "world." Their attractions, however, have not suffered on this account in the view of the poet, the artist, and the lover of nature. "Here in Kensington," wrote Haydon the painter, "are some of the most poetical bits of trees and stump, and sunny brown and green glens and tawny earth." But it is not within the scope of these pages, confined as they are to topics directly connected with Kensington Palace as a new public resort, to describe these two hundred and fifty acres of delightful verdant lawns, sylvan glades, and grassy slopes. We must resist the temptation, therefore, to wander away into the attractive prospect, which unfolds itself beneath our gaze when looking out from the windows of the state rooms, or into which we can saunter when we quit the Palace. Moreover, their charms, as they were and are, have been drawn by too many master hands--by Tickell, Leigh Hunt, Thackeray, Disraeli--to encourage any attempt at their description here. In our own day they have still been the favourite resort of many a jaded Londoner, in which to snatch a few hours of quiet and repose, out of the whirl of the great city around. Matthew Arnold's charming poem, "Lines written in Kensington Gardens," will occur to many, especially that stanza: "In this lone open glade I lie, Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand; And at its end to stay the eye, Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine trees stand." [Illustration: Decoration] [Illustration: SOUTH FRONT OF KENSINGTON PALACE IN 1819. (After Westall.)] =South Front of the Palace.= We may look upon this façade as architecturally the most interesting portion of the existent Palace of Kensington, for it shows us the exterior almost exactly as finished by Wren for William and Mary, about the year 1691. While unpretentious and plain, it is well and solidly built, and altogether appropriate to the purpose which it was intended to serve, namely, that of a comfortable, homely, suburban residence for the King and Queen and the court.