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den House being the designation of the other), went so far in his love of the antique, as to build a little old-looking brick tower in the north-eastern corner of the garden. It abuts on the public road, "astonishing the natives," and startling at first sight the antiquarian passenger, who in vain calls his records to mind in order to refresh his memory on the subject. On coming nearer, the mystery is cleared up by the nature of the materials and the spirit of the composition; and he begins to doubt whether the building, before long, will not be something more of a ruin than it was intended to appear. Meantime he sees, however, that there must be some agreeable prospect from the top window, for those who have the courage to go up to it.

We have a liking for hobbies, and a proper Shandean inclination towards persons

who go out of the ordinary way of the world to indulge in them; and we must own we cannot wish the tower down, now that it is up. It reminds us, if not of impregnable forts and enchanted castles, yet of the love of such things in imagination; of the books that speak of them; and of the intense delight we should have felt in being able to realize such an edifice for ourselves in childhood.

This last consideration helps the tower to something of a retrospective propriety, in relation to the poor little Duke of Gloucester. These were his own grounds, and this is just the thing he might have set up in them, after reading Jack the Giant Killer, or the Seven Champions of Christendom. We imagine

him ordering his honest Welsh servant and biographer, Lewis Jenkins, to personate Jack's Welsh giant, inside a great wicker-basket

erection made for the purpose, with a horrible bushy countenance at the top of it; then to go to the top of the tower and look down and goggle and roar horribly, making as if he would come down and eat Jack; and, finally, to roar much worse, and shriek so that nobody ever heard the like, and go dreadfully shuffling and stooping about while his Royal Highness Jack cuts his basket-work all to pieces.

JENKINS. But perhaps your Royal Highness won't quite bear in mind where the false head begins; while the real one, inside the stomach, is being frightened.

GLOUCESTER (who is a wit, laughing). Oh! never mind that, Jenkins. It will only make it more like right earnest, you know; and if I fetch blood, you shall have a famous Welsh rabbit for supper.

Here his Royal Highness's light infantry

set up a laugh, which Jenkins is obliged to swallow, though he longs to run at every one of them, and kick their souls out of their provoking and prematurely-insolent little bodies.

CHAPTER IV.

KENSINGTON PALACE AND GARDENS-THEIR ORIGIN AND

GROWTH-CHARACTER OF THE PALACE AS A BUILDING

-THE FINCH FAMILY-INMATES OF THE PALACE-ITS

WANT OF GARDENS TO ITSELF -HENEAGE FINCH AND HIS SONS, THE EARLS OF NOTTINGHAM-WILLIAM AND MARY, THEIR COURT AND CHARACTERS

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QUEEN ANNE

AND HER COURT THE DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH -POPE'S BANTER ON THE HORTICULTURE OF THOSE

DAYS.

Ir is to be hoped, that in the course of the local improvements which are now being effected in this quarter of Kensington, a

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