ries of his great victories at Worcester and Dunbar, Cromwell died (Sept. 3) at Whitehall, and lay in state at Somerset House. Richard Cromwell resided here during his brief exercise of power, and quitted it with only two old trunks, which contained, as he said, the lives and fortunes of all the good people of England-being the congratulatory addresses which had been showered upon him nine months before, when the good people of England thought he deserved them. The Rump Parliament would have sold Whitehall, Hampton Court, and Somerset

House, had not General Monk brought back Charles through the City to Whitehall, taking seven hours to perform the journey. Charles built a stone gallery, where Prince Rupert lodged in 1667, and in Privy Gardens, below it, were suites of apartments for the king's beauties. The Duchess of Portsmouth was very difficult to please, and her lodgings were altered and redecorated twice or thrice.

Charles re-collected, by proclamation, the plate, hangings, pictures. and sculpture, which had been sold or stolen during the Commonwealth,

and the gardens were laid out in terraces and parterres, and ornamented with bronze, marble, and dials, a few of which are now at Hampton Court. One of those dials was damaged by a nobleman, and Andrew Marvel wrote

This place for a dial was too insecure,
And a guard and a garden could not defend ;
For so near to the court they will never endure
Any witness to show how their time they
misspend.'

Misspent time, indeed, if we recall Evelyn's well-known description of the last Sunday evening Charles lived out in Whitehall. The king,'

he says, 'sitting and toying with his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleveland, Mazarin, &c., a French boy singing love-songs in those glorious galleries, whilst about twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at basset round a large table, a bank of at least 2000l. in gold before them:-six days after, all was dust.' What other History of the Court Life of Charles II. is needed?

James II. here washed the feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday; and was one day receiving Quaker Penn in his closet, and the next rebuilding the chapel for Roman wor

surrounded by hosts of nobles in all their state and glory. Look, until darker visions come-of kings and queens, and nobles wrapped in serecloths, only to be remembered by benefits conferred or crimes committed, or upon still greater men, who have left to all who follow them legacies of great thoughts and ennobling deeds. So with a reverent bow, pass we on to the world without.

Thorney Island, on which the abbey stands, and the old palace of Westminster stood, is 470 feet long

and 370 broad. It was once enclosed within lofty stone walls, having gates-one at King Street (the principal gate); a second near New Palace Yard; a third, opening into Tothill Street; and a fourth near the mill, in College Street. The first Westminster Palace was a royal residence in the days of Canute, and was destroyed by fire in the time of Edward the Confessor, who rebuilt the palace, and died there, in an apartment known as St. Edward's Chamber, and afterwards as the Painted Chamber, when Henry III.

added to the building. When the old tapestry was removed from the walls of this room, at the commencement of the present century, the original paintings were discovered, consisting of sacred subjects, with some battle-pieces, very spiritedly painted, and most valuable as specimens of early art; but the authorities, as a matter of course, had them covered with whitewash, and ought to have been soused in baths of the same mixture for their imbecility. In this chamber the deathwarrant of Charles I. was signed. The old House of Lords was

another portion of the Confessor's palace, and the gunpowder treason of Guy Fawkes was concealed in the kitchen beneath. It was a kitchen, and not a cellar, for in 1828 the buttery hatch and ambry, or cupboard, were discovered-so perhaps wicked Guy may have gained admission on pretence of seeing the cook. This portion of the building was called the Little Hall, to distinguish it from the Great Hall, built by Rufus, for grand banquetings and feastings, on high festivals and coronations, and only ceased to be so used within our memory. Rufus,

returning from Normandy, visited the New Hall at Westminster with a large military retinue. Some person remarked that it was too large-larger than it should have been. The king replied, that it was only a bedchamber in comparison with the building which he intended to make.' Rufus, no doubt, would have used the new clock tower as an eight-day clock, and the York and Nelson pillars as a pair of candlesticks. The arrow saved some trouble to the Mr. Gladstone of the period. And here Richard II. was at dinner when he heard that King Philip had entered Normandy. The

lion heart rose up and swore a deep oath that he would never turn away his face until he had met Philip; and as his back chanced to be to the door, they cut a hole through the wall to let the king out, on his way to Portsmouth-a very straightforward proceeding on the part of the king. The Little Hall was called Whitehall-not the Whitehall -and it was a Court of Requests in Henry VII.'s time. It was called Poor Man's Court (says Stow), because there he could have right without paying any money. What a pity it was ever abolished to make a House of Lords, where certainly

justice was not to be obtained upon such very easy terms. This house was destroyed by fire in 1834, when the beautiful tapestry, representing

the victories over the Spanish Armada, were burnt, and which had cost the brave Commander of the British fleet not less than 1,6281. of

THE HOUSE OF LORDS AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. (Before the Fire in 1834.)

the house with four thousand Cheshire archers, with bows bent and arrows notched ready to shoot.' The votes of supply must have passed with a rapidity which a modern Chancellor of the Exchequer must envy. When Richard II. renounced his crown in this hall, Henry IV. stood forward and claimed succession as descended from the third Harry.

St. Stephen's Chapel was built by the king of that name, and twice

rebuilt, the last time by the Second and Third Edwards. When the chapel was fitted up for the Commons, in Edward VI.'s time, the Iwalls were wainscoted, a new floor raised above, and a new ceiling placed below the original one, so that the beautiful paintings-and they were beautiful-and other artistic embellishments, of what are called the dark ages, were preserved, and revealed in 1800, when the side