The old Tudor palace is a significant landmark of the river-side, for it indicates the spot where suburban London may be said to begin. London has a long arm, and the voyager on the silent highway from its source on towards the sea finds, as he nears Hampton Court, unmistakable signs that he is reaching the fringe of a giant population. There is a greater frequency of white villas, glistening in the sunlight, shaded and cooled by the ample foliage which is rarely so green and prolific as on the banks of the southern Thames, the water gently lapping the edges of the shaven lawns. The river is dotted with boats, where before the dinghy and the outrigger had been but occasional; the towing-path is more populated; and--it is a melancholy story to tell--the water begins perceptibly to lose its limpidity. The pollution of the great rivers of the world seems to be one of the ultimate aims of civilisation. Is the Scheldt pure--the weird mysterious Scheldt of the "Flying Dutchman"--the storied Rhine, the classic Tiber, the "blue" Danube? Its immense navigation and the multitudes on its banks put the Thames into worse case than them all; but we trust the time is coming when we shall be more mindful of Nature's lovely heritage, and that if we may never again see salmon taken at London Bridge, neither shall we see banks of festering mud on the very limits of the tide. Hampton Court has been frequently described as the English Versailles, and there is much reason in the comparison. Alike in history and in human interest, however, Hampton Court is far more attractive than the splendidly frigid palace of Louis Quatorze. It is true that it has few pretensions to magnificence; but it is a compound of history, and the history of people rather than of events. The shades of Wolsey and Charles I. eternally haunt the portals through which so many historic figures have passed. But the ghost of the magnificent cardinal finds everything unfamiliar. Even the Great Hall, so often ascribed to him, was not built until after his death; Sir Christopher Wren's new west front is all strange to him; only in a little wing here and there can he recognise the handicraft of his own architect. Maybe the capacious cellar, with its wine-casks stuffed with broad pieces of gold, which, if we are to believe tradition the cardinal used for a treasury, is still untouched; but where are the five "fair courts" round which the palace was grouped by its builder? Had Hampton Court remained to our day precisely as it left the hands of the Tudor artificers, it would have been a priceless relic of the architecture and the methods of life affected by an English prince of the Church in the early years of the sixteenth century. But Wren has done his incongruous and Nash his clumsy work upon what Henry allowed to remain of the cardinal's design, and Hampton Court, as we know it, has, architecturally speaking, a blind side and a smiling side. There is no doubt a certain stateliness