who sculptured the water-gate at the foot of Buckingham Street, and to whom Cunningham attributes the monument of Sir Francis Vere in Westminster Abbey. If the beautiful wreaths and the capitals of the pilasters are still as he left them, they show exactly that kind of reticence which is one of the most charming characteristics of really high art. Inigo was too good an architect to leave anything like this to a workman in whom he could not thoroughly confide, but it is evident that what Gibbons did for Wren, Stone did for Jones. [Illustration: _Detail of Banqueting House_. _From_ KENT’S “_Inigo Jones_.”] It will have been perceived that the proportions of the interior were those which all but the modern anomalous architects have found to be the best. The room is formed of a double cube, the height being equal to the width, and the length double the height. A gallery was supported on engaged columns of the Ionic order. An upper order was of Corinthian pilasters. The roof was flat and divided into nine compartments, with very handsome mouldings between. The central compartment was oval, and contained Rubens’s principal picture of the “Apotheosis of James I.” This beautiful chamber was never designed for a chapel. We shall have occasion to describe further on what Jones designed for that purpose. It is reported that Rubens was assisted in these pictures by Jordaens. He received three thousand pounds for them, and they have been cleaned and restored several times at considerable expense. The figures are colossal, the children being more than nine feet high. The Banqueting House, though never consecrated, was made a Royal Chapel in 1724. Two years ago it was handed over to the United Service Institution, who have added to the south side a building which, in my opinion, forms a serious eyesore. It is curious that with all the wealth of design left by Inigo Jones, and ready to the hands of the Institution, they could not find something better than that by which they have disfigured every view of the Banqueting House. A great French architect named Azout, who visited England about 1685, is said to have declared that this “was the most finished of the modern buildings on this side the Alps.” To a sincere lover of beauty in architecture, this opinion will commend itself. It is sometimes said that the famous cartoons of Raphael were brought to England as designs for the tapestry for the Banqueting House. After the death of King Charles, they were sold, and were purchased by the Spanish Ambassador, Alonso de Cardanas. This is likely enough, as also that he sent them into Spain. Some hangings, said to be the same, but of this there could be no proof, were brought to London and exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, in Piccadilly, in 1825. They represented passages in the Acts of the Apostles. What became of them we do not know. I have only seen them mentioned in Tymms’s account of Whitehall in the second volume of Britton’s _Edifices_.