Hampton Court, and that the
latter when he became George the Second carried out a number of minor
alterations; but the place became less regularly and less notably a
centre of royal pageantry, though it was more than once made the
centre of state theatrical performances. King George the Third never
took up his residence here at all, owing, it is said, to the fact that
it was here that his grandfather had boxed his ears! It was, indeed,
during his long reign that the removal of many furnishings of the
Palace, and the systematic allotting of suites of rooms to people who
had some claim on royal gratitude took place. After the death of
George the Second Hampton Court ceased to be used as a royal
residence, and shortly after the accession of Queen Victoria the State
Apartments were thrown open to the public, and the Palace gradually
came to be recognized as one of the most delightful and interesting
centres of historical association within easy reach of the metropolis.

V

It has been seen that Hampton Court Palace has associations--often
peculiar and intimate associations--with our monarchs for close upon
three hundred years. In the first two chief courts, in the Great Hall,
the kitchens, the old cloisters, and the courts along the north side
of the building, it is not a difficult effort of the imagination that
is required to make us see it as it was in the brightly-attired days
of Tudor splendour and lavishness; to make us realize the arrival in
one of the courts of some noble company, when the great Cardinal was
entertaining and when King Henry was setting forth hunting; to make us
realize the hurrying of the cooks and their minions in the corridors
and cloisters about the great kitchens, the knots of idlers and
retainers in the lesser courts. In the later portions of the Palace,
the Fountain Court and the State Chambers, we may, "with the mind's
eye", see something of the more formal brightness of a later day, may
see the beaux and beauties of the early eighteenth century promenading
or "taking tea" with "proud Anna whom three realms obey".

The casual visitor to Hampton Court probably carries away two or three
definite impressions of the place, of a medley of decorated
chimneystacks, of warm red brick, of cool quadrangles, of broad lawns
and blazing flower beds, of an outlook over a boat-dotted river, of
galleries filled with a bewildering succession of old paintings, of
tapestried walls--and of the whole se