bridge over the upper part of the Serpentine, designed by Rennie in 1826. From hence there are delightful views up and down the water, especially charming in the rhododendron season. The scene on Sundays in 1877 is permitted by the fashions to recall the lines of Tickell "Where Kensington, high o'er the neighbouring lands, Here, while the town in damps and darkness lies, Where rich brocades and glossy damasks glow, Addison greatly extols the early landscape gardeners employed at Kensington. "Wise and Loudon are our heroic poets; and if, as a critic, I may single out any passage of their works to commend, I shall take notice of that part in the upper garden at Kensington, which at first was nothing but a gravel-pit. It must have been a fine genius for gardening that could have thought of forming such an unsightly hollow into so beautiful an area, and to have hit the eye with so uncommon and agreeable a scene as that which it is now wrought into. To give this particular spot of ground the greater effect, they have made a very pleasing contrast; for, as on one side of the walk you see this hollow basin, with its several little plantations, lying conveniently under the eye of the beholder, on the other side of it there appears a seeming mount, made up of trees, rising one higher than another, in proportion as they approach the centre."-Spectator, No. 477. 'Here, in Kensington, are some of the most poetical bits of tree and stump, and sunny brown and green glen, and tawny earth.”— Haydon's Autobiography. Kensington Palace, as Nottingham House, was the residence of the Lord Chancellor Heneage Finch, Earl of Nottingham. His son sold it to William III. in 1690, when Evelyn describes it as "a patched-up building-but, with the gardens, a very neat villa." The king employed Wren to add a story to the old house, which forms the north front of the existing palace, and to build the present south front. The improvement of Kensington became his passion, and while he was absent in Ireland Queen Mary's letters to her irascible spouse are full of the progress of his works there, and of abject apologies because she could not prevent chimneys smoking and rooms smelling of paint. Immediately after the king's return (Nov. 10, 1691) a great fire broke out in the palace, in which William and Mary, having narrowly escaped being burnt in their beds, fled into the garden, whence they watched their footguards as they passed buckets to extinguish the flames. When her new rooms were finished, Mary held the drawing-rooms there, at which her hostility to her sister Anne first became manifest to the world, the princess making "all the professions imaginable, to which the queen remained as insensible as a statue.” It was in a still existing room that Mary, when (Dec., 1694) she felt herself sickening for the small-pox, sat up nearly all through a winter's night, burning every paper which could throw light upon her personal history, and here, as her illness increased, William's sluggish affections were awakened, and he never left her, so affectionately stifling his asthmatic cough not to disturb her that, on waking from a long lethargy, she asked "where the king was, for she did not hear him cough." As the end approached she received the Sacrament, the bishops who were attending taking it with her. "God knows," said Burnet, " a sorrowful company, for we were losing her who was our chief hope and glory on earth." It was then that the queen begged to speak secretly to Archbishop Tenison, and, when he expected something important, bade him take away the Popish nurse whom, in the hallucination of illness, she imagined Dr. Radcliffe had set to watch her from behind the screen. Mary died on the morning of the 28th of December, 1694, and William was then in such passionate grief that he swooned three times on that terrible day, and his attendants thought that he would have been the first to expire. After Mary's death William remained in seclusion and grief at Kensington, whither Anne came to condole with him, carried in her sedan chair (for she was close upon her confinement) into his very room,—the King's Writing-Room, which is still preserved. There in 1696 William buckled the Order of the Garter with his own hands on the person of Anne's eldest child, the little Duke of Gloucester, and hither, after he had received his death-hurt by a fall from his sorrel pony at Hampton Court, he insisted upon returning to die, March 8, 1702. After William's death, Anne and Prince George of Denmark took possession of the royal apartments at Kensington. But the mother of seventeen children was already childless and she made her chief residence at St. James's, coming for the Easter recess to Kensington, where she planted "Queen Anne's Mount," and built in the gardens "Queen Anne's Banqueting Room," in which she gave fêtes which were attended by all the great world of London "in brocaded robes, hoops, fly-caps, and fans." The love of flowers which the queen manifested here led to her being apostrophised as "Great Flora" in the verses of Tom D'Urfey. In the same gloomy palace in which she had seen the last hours of her sister and brother-in-law, Queen Anne (Oct. 28, 1708) lost her husband, George of Denmark, with whom she had lived in perfect happiness for twenty years. The Duchess of Marlborough describes her agony afterwards in the chamber of death-" weeping and clapping her hands swaying herself backward and forward, clasping her hands together, with other marks of passion." She was led away that evening by the Duchess to her carriage to be taken to St. James's, but stopped upon the doorstep to desire Lord Godolphin to see that, when the Prince was buried at Westminster, room should be left for her in his grave. Anne did not live so much at Kensington after her husband's death, but it was here, on July 20, 1714, that Mrs. Danvers, the chief lady in waiting, found her staring vacantly at the clock in her Presence Chamber "with death in her look." It was an apoplectic seizure. On her death-bed she gave a last evidence of the love towards her people which had been manifested through her whole reign, by saying, as she placed the Lord Treasurer's wand in the hands of the Duke of Shrewsbury, "For God's sake use it for the good of my people." But, from that moment, having accomplished her last act as queen, Anne seems to have retraced in spirit the acts of her past life, and to have been filled with all the agonies of remorse for her conduct to her father and his son-"Oh my brother, my poor brother, what will become of you?" was her constant cry. To the Bishop of London, who was watching beside her, she intrusted a message, which he promised to deliver, but which he said would cost him his head. On hearing of her repentance the Jacobite lords hurried to Kensington. Atterbury proposed to proclaim the Chevalier at Charing Cross, the Duke of Ormonde would join him if the queen could but recover consciousness to mention him as her successor. Lady Masham undertook to watch her, but it was too late. "She dies upwards, her feet are cold and dead already," were her hurried words in the antechamber, and by eight o'clock on Sunday morning, August 1, 1714, "good Queen Anne" was dead. The rooms on the north-west of the Palace were added by George II., and intended as a nursery for his children. He also died here (October 25, 1760), suddenly, in his seventy-seventh year, falling upon the floor, just after he had taken his morning chocolate, and when he was preparing to walk in the garden. George III. did not occupy Kensington Palace himself, but as his family grew up its different apartments were assigned to them. Caroline, Princess of Wales, lived there, with her mother the Duchess of Brunswick, after her separation from her husband within a year after their marriage. In the south wing lived Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, with his first wife, Lady Augusta Murray. He held his conversazione there as President of the Royal Society; he collected there his magnificent library; and there he died, April 21, 1843. His second wife, created Duchess of Inverness, continued to reside at Kensington till her death. Finally, in the south-eastern apartments of the palace, lived Edward, Duke of Kent, and his wife Victoria of Saxe Cobourg, and in them their only daughter VICTORIA was born, May 24, 1819, was christened, June 24, 1819, and continued to have her principal residence till |