prisoner, and here he wrote his sweet verses and
celebrated Nature's beauties and the praises of his lady-love, Jane
Beaufort. Here, too, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, long suffered, and
sung the sweetest lays. We had a ticket to see the state apartments.
Suffice it to say that we went through the Queen's Audience Chamber, the
Vandyke Room, the Queen's State Drawing Boom or Zuccharelle Room, the
State Ante-Room, the Grand Staircase and Vestibule, the Waterloo
Chamber, the Grand Ball Room, St. George's Hall, the Guard Chamber, the
Queen's Presence Chamber. All these are very, very beautiful. I was
delighted with the Vandyke Room. Here are twenty-two undoubted
productions of this greatest of portrait painters. Charles I. and
Henrietta were favorite subjects with the artist. Here are several of
them and their children, and they are to be found elsewhere. The
equestrian portrait of Charles I. is a truly grand picture. You know the
beautiful old copy, of a cabinet size, which we have in the study at
home: it will please me more than ever, since I know how faithful it is.
That queen of Charles's who made him so much trouble with her Popery and
temper was a wonderfully beautiful woman. I should not soon be weary
looking at her portrait. She was daughter of Henry IV. of France. Her
fortune was hard, to lose a father by an assassin, and a husband by the
executioner. The Gobelin tapestry, illustrating the life of Esther, in
the Audience Room, is very rich. In the State Ante-Room are the most
wonderful carvings of fowl, fish, fruit, and flowers, by Grinling
Gibbons. They are thought to be unsurpassed in this department of art.
On the Great Staircase is a noble colossal marble statue, of that
excellent sovereign, but bad man, George IV. It is by Chantrey. The
Waterloo Chamber is adorned with thirty-eight portraits of men connected
with Waterloo, and twenty-nine of them are by Sir Thomas Lawrence. St.
George's Hall is two hundred feet long, thirty-four wide, thirty-two
high, and contains some fine portraits of sovereigns by Vandyke, Lely,
Kneller, Gainsborough, and Lawrence. On twenty-four shields are the arms
of each sovereign of the Order of the Garter, from Edward III. to
William IV. The Guard Chamber is a noble room, eighty feet in length.
Immediately on entering, we were struck with the colossal bust of Nelson
by Chantrey, A piece of the mast of the Victory, shot through by a
cannon ball, forms its fitting pedestal. Here, too, w