Beyond the Great Hall, the apartments which are shown to the public have little architectural or personal interest. The rooms in which Henry, Elizabeth, and Charles I. lived are all in the Tudor portion of the palace; the series which has been converted into one great picture gallery is in Wren's building, and runs round the Fountain Court and along the eastern front. What this front lacks architecturally it gains to some extent scenically, since it overlooks the geometrical flower-beds, the straight avenues, the long and narrow Dutch canals, beloved of the Stadtholder, the like of which one may still see in the gardens of old world _casteelen_ in Holland. Some of the avenues, seen from these upper windows, are very charming and effective, notably that which is closed in by the red mass of Kingston Church. This is not the place to discuss the pictures with which the palace abounds. I shall not perhaps be committing treason if I suggest that they are remarkable more for their quantity than for their quality. There is a sprinkling of pictures of which any gallery might be proud, and some of the portraits, of no artistic importance, are valuable by reason of their personality. Kneller's "Hampton Court Beauties" have acquired a factitious fame, for whatever may have been the charms of the originals, they are assuredly not very obvious here. Poor, indiscreet Queen Mary got herself well hated by the other ladies of the Court whom she considered insufficiently attractive to be numbered among the elect. Perhaps the most famous of all the pictures at Hampton Court is Vandyke's equestrian portrait of Charles I., of which there is a replica at Windsor. Many of the paintings are true memorials of the old palace, and formerly hung in the ancient state apartments. They have the savour of old associations which the rooms in which they are hung lack--memories of times when life was more fitful, more spectacular, and, as it seems to us in this distant age, more romantic than it had become when Dutch William sowed _Je maintiendrai_ about the old place, as Henry had scattered his roses and greyhounds and fleurs-de-lis, and all the other heraldic bravery of a century when heraldry was a fine art. Hampton Court is rich in personal history, and many a romantic shade must haunt its Great Hall, there to recall the vanished banquet, when the wine-cup gleamed so red, and bright eyes danced more intoxicatingly than any vintage of Spain or France. Many, too, there be that must still weep out their historic sorrows, and the visionary axe must flash before many a ghostly eye. Here lived Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, as well as Bluebeard's more fortunate wives. Edward VI. was born, and Jane Seymour died here. Elizabeth kept her Christmases merrily indeed at Hampton Court; tradition says that she was here dining off a goose when the news came of the defeat of the Armada. It was a favourite residence of Charles I., who passed here