the Palace of the Plantagenets; the Palace of the Stuarts; the Masques of James I.; the Parliamentary side of the last century; and the streets and slums. A great many things have been purposely omitted from these pages which belong to Westminster and have taken place there. For instance, there is the School with its long line of scholars, afterward famous. Nothing has been said about the School. There is, again, the Abbey Church. Very little has been said about the buildings; the additions, alterations, restorations: nothing at all has been said about the monuments which crowd its aisles and transepts. There is Westminster Hall. Very little, indeed, has been said here of the things done within its walls: the Coronation Banquets; the Trials; the Receptions. Nothing has been said concerning the executions and the tournaments which have taken place in Palace Yard, Old and New. Nothing has been said about the New Houses of Parliament. These things, and a great many more which the reader can remember for himself, have been omitted from these pages, partly because they belong to the history of this country and may be found in all Histories--they happened in Westminster and they belong to Great Britain; partly because they have already been so well treated that it is unnecessary and would be even presumptuous for me to attempt them; and partly because the space at my disposal is limited, though the materials are practically inexhaustible. These chapters are not to be considered as a History of Westminster, or a Survey: they are pictures of the City with its Palace, its Abbey, its Sanctuary, and its slums, from a time when London did not exist until the present day. APPENDIX. THE COURT OF CHARLES II. The popular imagination pictures the Court of Charles the Second as a place of no ceremony or state or dignity whatever; where the King strolled about the courts and where there was singing of boys, laughter of women, tinkling of guitars, playing of cards, making merriment without stint or restraint, a Bohemia of Courts. We have been taught to think thus of King Charles’s Court by the historian who has seized on one or two scenes and episodes--for instance, the last Sunday evening of Charles’s life; by the writer of romance; by the chronicler of scandal; by the Restoration poets and the Restoration dramatists.