chief staircase is of white marble, and the rooms
are richly decorated. The state apartments include drawing-rooms,
saloons, and the throne-room, which is sixty-four feet in length. The
picture-gallery contains a collection of pictures made by George IV.,
chiefly of the Dutch school; it includes works of Rembrandt, Rubens,
Vandyck, Duerer, Cuyp, Ruysdael, Vandervelde, and others.

The grounds are about forty acres in extent, and contain a large piece
of ornamental water, on the shore of which is a pavilion, or
summer-house, with frescoes by Eastlake, Maclise, Landseer, Dyce, and
others, illustrating Milton's "Comus." The channel of the Tyburn, now a
sewer, passes under the palace. The Marble Arch, at the north-east
corner of Hyde Park, was first designed to face the palace, where it
stood until 1850.

The palace is partly on the site of the well-known Mulberry Gardens, a
place of entertainment in the seventeenth century. These gardens
originated in an order of James I., who wished to encourage the rearing
of silkworms in England. This project, like many others of the same
King, proved a failure, and the gardens were turned into a place of
public recreation. The frequenters were of the fashionable classes, and
came in the evening to sit in small arbours, and "be regaled with
cheesecakes, syllabubs, and wine sweetened with sugar." In this form the
place was extremely popular, and is often mentioned in contemporary
literature. Dryden came there to eat tarts with "Mrs." Anne Reeve, and
doubtless Evelyn and Pepys often strolled about in the gay crowd, a
crowd much gayer than it would now be--in the matter of costume, at all
events. The scene of "The Mulberry Gardens," a play by Sir Charles
Sedley (1668) is laid here.

Stafford House, not far from St. James's Palace, and overlooking the
Green Park, is now tenanted by the Duke of Sutherland. It was originally
built for the Duke of York, brother to George IV., but he died before
its completion. It stands on the site of an older building, called
Godolphin House, and also occupies the site of the Queen's Library
formed by Caroline, wife of George IV.

St. James's Palace is divided into many sets of apartments and suites of
rooms, and in this way resembles more the ancient than the modern idea
of a palace. On its site once stood a hospital for fourteen leprous
women, which was founded, as Stow quaintly says, "long before the time
of any man's memory." Maitland says the hospita