ubdued, that you are not
offended with that feeling of over-fineness that is felt at Raby.

You ascend by a noble staircase, surrounded with armorial escutcheons
instead of a cornice, to a suite of very spacious and handsome rooms, of
which the principal are the saloon, dining-room, breakfast-room, library,
and chapel. The ceilings are finely worked into compartments with
escutcheons and pendants. The walls of the saloon are covered with crimson
silk, sprigged with yellow flowers; those of the dining-room, with pale
buff, and white moldings, rich tracery and elegant compartmented ceiling.
In the center of some of the arches you see the crescent, the crest of the
Percys.

On the whole, it is a noble and highly satisfactory mansion; but still it
is when you get without again that you feel the real antiquity and proud
dignity of the place. The fame of the Percy and the Douglas seems to be
whispered by every wind that plays around those old towers.

HAMPTON COURT [Footnote: From "Visits to Remarkable Places."]

BY WILLIAM HOWITT

To the visitors of cultivated taste and historic knowledge, Hampton Court
abounds with subjects of reflective interest of the highest order. It is
true, that, compared with some of our palaces, it can lay no claims to
antiquity; but from the days of Henry VIII. to those of George III., there
are few of them that have witnessed more singular or momentous events.

Overbearing despot as Wolsey [who built it] was, there is something
magnificent in the sweep of his ambition, and irresistibly interesting in
the greatness of his fall. He was the last of those haughty prelates in
the good old Catholic times who rose up from the dust of insignificance
into the most lordly and overgrown magnificence; outdoing monarchs in the
number of their servants, and in the pomp of their state. Equaling the
great Cardinals who have figured on the Continent, Ximenes, Richelieu,
Mazarin, and De Retz, in political ability and personal ambition, he
exceeded all in the wealth which he unhesitatingly seized, and the
princely splendor in which he lived.

When we enter, therefore, the gates of Hampton Court, and are struck with
the magnificent extent of the erection, which at that time not only,
according to Rapin, "was a stately palace, and outshined all the king's
houses," but was one of the most splendid structures in Europe, we can not
help figuring to ourselves the proud Cardinal surveying its progress, and
mus