ed down to us by the first artists she could command form a
spectacle in which Americans can take a sort of home interest. Nearly
all date before 1776, and we have a rightful share in them. Each
head and each picture is a study. We have art and history together.
Familiar as we may be with the events with which the persons
represented are associated, it is impossible to gaze upon their
lineaments, set in the accessories of their day by the ablest hands
guided by eyes that saw below the surface, and not feel that we have
new readings of British annals.

[Illustration: WOLSEY.]

Among the most ancient heads is a medallion of Henry VII. by
Torregiano, the peppery and gifted Florentine who executed the
marvelous chapel in Westminster Abbey and broke the nose of Michael
Angelo. English art--or rather art in England--may be said to date
from him. He could not create a school of artists in the island--the
material did not exist--but the few productions he left there stood
out so sharply from anything around them that the possessors of the
wealth that was then beginning to accumulate employed it in drawing
from the Continent additional treasures from the newly-found world
of beauty. The riches of England have grown apace, and her collectors
have used them liberally, if not always wisely, until her galleries,
in time, have come to be sought by the connoisseurs, and even the
artists, of the Continent.

[Illustration: PORTICO LEADING TO GARDENS.]

The last picture-gallery we traverse is the only one at Hampton Court
specially built for its purpose; and it is empty. This is the room
erected by Sir Christopher Wren for the reception of the Cartoons.
It leads us to the corridor that opens on the garden-front. We leave
behind us, in addition to the state apartments, a great many others
which are peopled by other inhabitants than the big spiders, said to
be found nowhere else, known as cardinals. The old palace is not kept
wholly for show, but is made useful in the political economy of
the kingdom by furnishing a retreat to impecunious members of the
oligarchy. Certain families of distressed aristocrats are harbored
here--clearly a more wholesome arrangement than letting them take
their chance in the world and bring discredit on their class.

[Illustration: CENTRE AVENUE.]

Emerging on the great gardens, forty four acres in extent, we find
ourselves on broad walks laid out with mathematical regularity, and
edged by noble masses