[Illustration: _Section of the Banqueting House_. _From_ KENT’S “_Inigo Jones_.”] A curious question arises, which is not very easily answered: Where would this building have stood in the complete palace? The visitor entering the great court would have found three other buildings resembling this one. Two were to be at the northern end on either side, and two more at the southern end. Connecting them were two buildings of much greater beauty and of large size, the whole court being no less than 378 feet wide and 728 feet long. If, as Fergusson and others have asserted, the Banqueting House was at the north-eastern corner, it would be on the visitor’s left, while a chapel would have been on his right. At the centre of the façade on the right was the entrance to the royal apartments, which were thus arranged to be on the western side and to look out on the park, to the south of the Treasury. On the opposite side of the great court access was to be obtained to a noble hall, suitable for state occasions, and, in fact, the buildings on this side, which were to look on the river, were of a public character as distinguished from the private apartments of the King and the royal family. If, as seems probable, the Banqueting House stood at the north-east corner, and if we look at the plan of Whitehall which George Vertue engraved for the Society of Antiquaries, we find that Inigo’s building is nearly in the middle of the palace. If we measure 728 feet to the southward, it takes us all that distance towards Westminster, and overwhelms in building-stone the whole of the Privy Garden and part of the Bowling Green. All the great ranges of buildings to the northward—the kitchen court, the wood-yard, the small beer-buttery, and the two Scotland Yards—would have had to go. We can but conjecture that Inigo wished to have a grand open space before his Charing Cross façade—what the French call a “place d’armes.” On the Westminster side there could not have been much space beyond the Bowling Green. The park, of course, was open, and so was the river. Much thought accordingly was spent on these fronts, and perhaps that to the Thames shows Jones at his very best. No description can do it any kind of justice; but it may be worth while to mention the principal points. The centre was of three storeys, the lowest with rusticated pilasters. The next storey has features common to much of the design, but two flanking buildings only two storeys high are marked by a studied plainness, flat pilasters being between the windows. At either end of the front we find three-storey pavilions—we can hardly call them towers. They, like the centre, have engaged columns standing well out. The most beautiful thing on this front is a projecting portico in the centre, three arches wide and one deep. This beautiful balcony—the most elegant little bit in the whole design—is of the Corinthian order, two storeys high, the lower rusticated, and on a balustrade above are the statues with which