pen a view from the apartments to
the Thames. On the northern side is a tennis court, and beyond that a
gate which leads into the wilderness or _Maze_.[7] Further on is the
great gate of the gardens.

The gardens, which comprise about 44 acres, were originally laid out
by London and Wise. George III. gave the celebrated Brown permission
to make whatever improvements his fine taste might suggest; but he
declared his opinion that they appeared to the best advantage in their
original state, and they accordingly remain so to this day. The extent
of the kitchen gardens is about 12 acres. In the privy garden is a
grape house 70 feet in length, and 14 in breadth; the interior being
wholly occupied by one vine of the black Hamburgh kind, which was
planted in the year 1769, and has in a single year, produced 2,200
bunches of grapes, weighing, on an average, one pound each.

The grotesque forms of the gardens, and the mathematical taste in
which they are disposed, are advantageously seen in a bird's-eye view
as in the Engraving, which represents the tortuous beauty of the
parterres, and the pools, fountains, and statues with characteristic
accuracy. The formal avenues, radiating as it were, from the gardens
or centre, are likewise distinctly shown, as is also the canal formed
by Wolsey through the middle avenue. The intervening space, then a
parklike waste, is now planted with trees, and stretches away to the
village of Thames Ditton; and is bounded on the south by the Thames,
and on the north by the high road to Kingston.

The palace is open to the public, and besides its splendid apartments,
and numerous buildings, there is a valuable collection of pictures,
which are too celebrated to need enumeration. A curious change has
taken place in the occupancy of some apartments--many rooms originally
intended for domestic offices being now tenanted by gentry. The
whole is a vast assemblage of art, and reminds us of the palace of
Versailles, which is about the same distance from Paris as Hampton
Court from London.

* * * * *

GREECE.

(_For The Mirror_.)

Alas! for fair Greece, how her glories are failed,
Her altars are broken, her trophies are gone,
The Crescent her temples and shrines hath invaded,
And Freedom hath bow'd to the Mussulman throne.

Fair Liberty say! shall the land of Achilles
Reluctantly cherish a dastardly slave,
Who can crouch at the foot of a despot, whose