e; the
drinking, noisy crowd about the door of every pot-house along the way.
It was a delightful drive of a dozen or more miles, through the most
charming suburbs imaginable,--past lawns, and gardens, and green old
trees shading miniature parks; past "detached" villas that had blossomed
into windows; indeed, the plate glass upon houses of most modest
pretension was almost reckless extravagance in our eyes, forgetting, as
we did, the slight duty to be paid here upon what is, with us, an
expensive luxury. No wonder the English are a healthful people,--the sun
shines upon them. I like their manner of house-building, of home-making.
They set up first a great bay-window, with a room behind it, which is of
secondary importance, with wide steps leading up to a door at the side.
They fill this window with the rarest, rosiest, most rollicksome
flowers. Then, if there remain time, and space, and means, other rooms
are added, the bay-windows increasing in direct proportion; while
shades, drawn shades, are a thing unknown. "But the carpets?" They are
so foolish as to value health above carpets.

It was high noon when we rolled up the wide avenue of Bushey Park, with
its double border of gigantic chestnuts and limes, through Richmond
Park, with its vast sweep of greensward flecked with the sunbeams,
dripping like the rain through the royal oaks, past Richmond terrace,
with its fine residences looking out upon the Thames, the translucent
stream, pure and beautiful here, before going down to the city to be
defiled--like many a life. We dismounted at the gates to the palace, in
the rambling old village that clings to its skirts, and joined the crowd
passing through its wide portals.

It is an old palace thrown aside, given over to poor relatives, by
royalty,--as we throw aside an old gown; a vast pile of dingy, red brick
that has straggled over acres of Hampton parish, and is kept within
bounds by a high wall of the same ugly material. It has pushed itself up
into towers and turrets, with pinnacles and spires rising from its
battlemented walls. It has thrust itself out into oriel and queer little
latticed windows that peep into the gardens and overhang the three
quadrangles, and is with its vast gardens and park, with its wide canal
and avenues of green old trees, the most delightfully ugly, old place
imaginable. Here kings and queens have lived and loved, suffered and
died, from Cardinal Wolsey's time down to the days of Queen Anne.