A short time ago a violent cry was raised in the London journals for the removal of these splendid works of art to the metropolis. It was curious to see some of the most zealous of these journalists menacing them with destruction, both from fire and water. They were represented as perishing from damp in a rotting and neglected old palace; and the palace as in danger of being burnt down. Every one, after this, must be surprised to find the palace a firm and compact brick building, not very liable, either from material or situation, to fire, and remarkably dry, in excellent preservation, and kept in the neatest order. The reasons urged would have been equally good for stripping the palace of the Beauties, and of any other valuable painting. But the zealous advocates for their removal forgot that London has no place fit to receive them, either in point of size or in means of protecting them from the effects of a London atmosphere. Here they are in a pure air, and there is no reason to believe that they have suffered materially since they have been finally deposited in this gallery; and the facility of a railroad has made them nearly as accessible to all persons in the metropolis, as if they were in some part of the great Babel itself; while 32,000 visiters, in one month, prove they offer an additional inducement to a country trip. Were a new gallery built for their reception, it should be much larger than the present one, in fact, nearly as wide as this is long. In this, we are too near all those hung on the side of the gallery, as by looking on either of those at the ends from the centre of the gallery you instantly perceive. It is only there that you see

them in the full strength of their relief, and comprehend the beauty of the whole group.

Here we must quit the presence of these noblest of the conceptions of the divine Raffaelle,-rejoicing, however, that they are now free to our contemplation as the very landscape around them, and that we can, at our pleasure, walk into this fine old palace, linger before these sacred creations at our will, and return to them again and again.

Quitting them, we shall now hastily quit the palace of Hampton Court; for though there is a small room adjoining, containing Cassanova's drawing of Raffaelle's celebrated picture of the Transfiguration, and several other interesting paintings ; and yet another long Portrait Gallery, filled from end to end with the forms and faces of celebrated persons by celebrated artists, we can but gaze and pass on. And yet who would not delight to have that one room to himself, to haunt day after day, and to ponder over the features and costumes of Locke, Newton, Sheridan, Boyle, Charles XII. of Sweden, Caroline, the Queen of George II., made interesting to all the world by the author of Waverley, in the interview of Jeannie Deans? Who would not pass a moment before even the little Geoffrey Hudson, and think of all that diminutive knight's wrath, his duel, and his adventure in the pic? Lord Falkland's fine and characteristic face is a sight worth a long hour's walk on a winter's morning; and the Earl of Surrey, flaming in his scarlet dress, scarlet from head to foot,-who would not stop and pay homage to the memory of his bravery, his poetry, and his

Geraldine? But there are Rosamond Clifford and Jane Shore. Lely had not brought the Graces into England in their day, and therefore, instead of those wondrous beauties which we expect them, we find them-ghosts.

Here, too, is another portrait of Queen Elizabeth, a fulllength by Zucchero, where "stout Queen Bess" is not in one of her masculine moods of laconic command-when she looked "every inch a queen"-but in a most melancholy and romantic one indeed. She is clad in a sort of Armenian dress-a loose figured robe, without shape, without sleeves, and trimmed with fur; a sort of high cap, and eastern slippers. She is represented in a wood, with a stag near her; and on a tree are cut, one below the other, after the fashion of the old romances, the following sentences: - INJUSTI JUSTA QUERELA. MEA SIC MIHI.-DOLOR EST MEDICINA DOLORI. And at the foot of the tree, on a scroll, these verses, supposed to be of the royal manufacture:

The restless swallow fits my restlesse mind,
In still revivinge, still renewinge wrongs;
Her just complaints of cruelty unkinde
Are all the musique that my life prolonges.
With pensive thoughts my weeping stag I crown,
Whose melancholy teares my cares expresse;
His teares in sylence, and my sighes unknowne
Are all the physicke that my harmes redresse.
My onley hopes was in this goodly tree,
Which I did plant in love, bring up in care
But all in vaine, for now to late I see

The shales be mine, the kernels others are

My musique may be plaintes, my musique teares,

If this be all the fruite my love-tree beares.

We step through the door on which Jane Shore's spectral visage is hung; and lo! we are on the Queen's Staircase, and descend once more to the courts of Wolsey. Long as we have lingered in this old palace, we have had but a glimpse of it. Its antiquities, its pleasantness, and its host of paintings, cannot be comprehended in a Visit; they require a volume; and a most delicious volume that would be, which should take us leisurely through the whole, giving us the spirit and the history, in a hearty and congenial tone, of its towers and gardens, and all the renowned persons who have figured in its courts, or whose limned shapes now figure on its walls.

COMPTON-WINYATES is a curious old house belonging to the Marquis of Northampton, and gives the title of Lord Compton to his eldest son. It lies in the range of hills of which EdgeHill forms a part, and is about four miles from Edge-Hill, and two from the village of Brailes. Perhaps there is no house in the kingdom which is located in a more hidden and out-of-theworld situation. It stands in a deep hollow of this range of hills, surrounded by woods and ponds. It is often called Comptonin-the-Hole, from its singular site; and a man of whom I asked to it, said, "You never seed a house in sich a hole." In endeavouring to find it, I passed from Edge-Hill, down

the

way