took much pleasure in watching the workmen engaged at the alterations. The Queen had a little tool chest made for him, which cost £20. But she and her sister Anne never met. Mary seems to have filled the Palace with nick-nacks of all sorts. It was she who set the fashion of china-mania, which has had its revival in the present day. With the state-life of the Queen, Kensington has no connection.

On the 19th of December, 1694, Mary, who had been greatly shocked by the sudden death of her favourite, Archbishop Tillotson, a month previously, became ill. Dr. Radcliffe, the same who had attended the Duke of Gloucester at Campden House, pronounced the disease to be small-pox. The Queen, with a thoughtfulness that did her honour, at once ordered every one who had not had that fearful malady to leave the Palace. She sat up all that night destroying papers. The next day she was worse. At length it became evident that there was no hope of her recovery. Then, at last, her husband felt the worth of the treasure he must inevitably lose. His fortitude gave way. "There is no hope," he said, “I was the happiest man on earth; and I am the

most miserable. She had no fault, none; you knew her well, but you could not know, nobody but myself could know, her goodness." Mary received the communion. She tried to take a last farewell of him whose life was bound up in her own, but in vain. William was led from the room in a paroxysm of anguish. A few hours later and the Palace had become a house of mourning.

Greenwich Hospital remains: a noble memorial of the love and reverence with which William ever afterwards regarded her name.

After the death of Mary, the Palace must have become dull indeed. William cared but little for society; and for English society least of all. The English murmured at the manner in which their monarch chose the company of his Bentincks and Keppels, in preference to that of their Earls of Dorset and of Devonshire. But in most cases the Dutch were faithful, and loved their Stadtholder, and the English were traitors, and hated their king. Kensington Palace, too, was not the most desirable place for holding evening parties and balls. The road from it to town, which lay through the park, was infested with high

waymen. Some of William's visitors, returning from his card parties, found that there were other modes, besides loo and basset, by which money was rapidly transferred from one pocket to another. In consequence of these occurrences, the road between the Palace and London was hung with lamps, and bodies of soldiers patrolled the park on the evenings when the king entertained company at Kensington.

About a year after the death of the Queen, an event took place which, though it belongs rather to general history than to our pages, demands a slight notice. This was the celebrated Assassination Plot of 1696. The exiled James still looked with longing eyes on the crown he had lost by his own folly. Always much under the influence of the Jesuits, he seems to have been thoroughly imbued with their maxim that "the end justifies the means." It was doubtless a good thing for himself, and for the Roman Catholic religion, that he should again rule over Great Britain. While William was on the throne, it was evident that this was impossible. The inference was plain-William must be put out of the way. An agent was found to conduct the affair. This agent was a Scotchman

Sir George Barclay. He was furnished with a proper commission from James, and was soon at the head of thirty-nine other ruffians as bold and as desperate as himself.

The first plan was a night attack on Kensington House. The Palace was indeed but slightly defended, and might easily be carried by assault; or, more easily still, be set on fire, while the forty conspirators remained in the garden to see that the game did not escape. Had this plan been put into execution and succeeded, a dark stain might have sunk deep into the walls of Kensington Palace, similar to that which colours the floor of the ante-room at Holyrood. Kensingtonians, out for a Sunday's airing, would have looked up at the old building with the same feelings with which country cousins now look up at the Tower of London. But such things were not to be. Fortunately for England, the stigma of having murdered the man who had been the salvation of her rights and liberty was not to rest upon her. The night attack on Kensington was abandoned, and another scheme was proposed, to which the preference was given. William's sole relaxation was hunting,

Every Saturday he was accustomed to set out by coach from Kensington to Turnham-green, cross the river by boat at that point, and enjoy his favourite exercise in Richmond Park. The conspirators decided to attack him on his return. The day following the festival of St. Valentine, Saturday, the 15th of February, was fixed for the deed, and all the preparations were completed. Louis the Fourteenth ordered the French fleet to be in readiness at Calais, where James was waiting to embark, the moment the wishedfor tidings should arrive. But among the conspirators was a Roman Catholic gentleman, named Pendergrass. Pendergrass was horrified at the aspect which the plot had assumed. Much as he wished for the return of James, he was not prepared to turn assassin to procure it. But neither did he wish to betray his comrades. He hinted, however, to Lord Portland, William's greatest friend, that the king would do wisely to remain at home on the 15th; and when Saturday arrived, the usual cavalcade did not assemble at the gates of Kensington. The day was cold, and it was given out that the king would not hunt on account of the weather. The plotters resolved to wait