about twenty minutes apart, they had to slow up not to annihilate the populace! After standing and watching the blaze for some time we moved off; it was amusing to see the electric advertisements of the Phoenix Fire Assurance Company on the opposite corner still winking" the information that it was "limited." In the midst of the excitement the Home Secretary drove up in a taxi; instantly the crowd cheered, and attention was diverted from the fire. The next morning the paper announced that the crowd hissed, but we happened to hear the cheering ourselves. At intervals welldressed people who had been dining elsewhere would burst through the crowd and rush to the fated hotel. Some of them may have left babies on the top floor, whereas others at least had elaborate wardrobes at stake. One woman was in a perfect panic, her eyes protruding with terror. It was quite a dreadful sight.

Stopping in at a cigar store on the way back, the man greeted us with a cordial bow, and a busy"Good evening, sir-nice fire, sir!" as one who should say, "See how we put ourselves out to entertain our guests!" An American actor, who was taking a bath at the time, was the only one to perish.

CHAPTER VIII

HERE AND THERE NEAR LONDON

W

INDSOR and Eton, and Hampton Court, are almost parts of London, and hardly come within the scope of this chapter. But it is desirable to see them all, of course. The best account of Windsor, even if one were going to read it as a guide, is to be found in Harrison Ainsworth's "Windsor Castle." It would not usually occur to one to apply to such a source, but it is rather a pet theory of mine that really good fiction has often more instruction in it than commonplace statement in an ordinary unimaginative guide book. Some say that Windsor received its name from the winding shore of the Thames. Eton, alluded to even in Elizabethan times as "a famous school for polite letters," has always held its own ever since, and remains that and much more, to-day.

Then it is obligatory to wander through the gardens of Hampton Court and get properly lost in the maze. But it detracts somewhat

from the sense of adventure to know that a man is sitting on a high platform in order to see where you go, and to give you instructions how to get out in case you are really seriously mislaid among the bushes! We are told by a contemporaneous writer that the garden at Hampton Court was first laid out "in a parterre of scroll work in box, which was not only very costly at first making, but was also very expensive in keeping constantly clipped; which," he continues, together with the ill scent, which frequently reached the royal apartments, occasioned its being demolished." Well for the royal family if they never smelt anything worse than a box hedge!

According to a German traveller of Elizabethan times Hampton Court was "magnificently built by Cardinal Wolsey, in ostentation of his wealth." After the gardens, in interest, come the picture galleries. Edward Fitz Gerald says: "Close by is Hampton Court, with its stately gardens, and fine portraits inside; all very much to my liking. I am quite sure gardens should be formal, and unlike general nature." Daniel Defoe says that "all Europe has been rummaged, as we may say," for pictures for the royal gallery at Hampton Court.

Another attractive place near by is Straw

berry Hill. Edward Fitz Gerald testifies to its charms: "Strawberry Hill for me! I looked all over it, you know all the pictures, jewels, curiosities were sold some ten years ago; only bare walls remain. The walls, indeed, here and there stuck with Gothic woodwork, much of it therefore in less good taste - all a toy, but yet a toy of a very clever man. The rain is coming through the roofs, and gradually disengaging the confectionery battlements and cornices."

Richmond was originally the famous Palace of Shene, to which allusion is so often noticed by readers of mediæval English history. The name was changed by Henry VII. Fabyan thus alludes to the occurrence: "In this year (the sixteenth of Henry VII) "the twenty-first of December in the night was an hideous thunder; and this year was the name of the king's palace of Shene changed and called after that day Rychemont." There is little to be seen at Richmond now, and it is usually a very crowded little excursion boat that plies there.

The highest ground between York and London is High Barnet. Over this road once came little Oliver Twist, " limping slowly into the little town of Barnet."

Among the Paston Letters is one from Sir John to his mother, relating to the celebrated

battle of Barnet, April 18, 1471: "Mother, I recommend me to you, letting you weet that, blessed be God, my brother John is alive, and fareth well, and in no peril of death; nevertheless he is hurt with an arrow on his right arm below the elbow, and I have sent him a surgeon, which hath dressed him, and he telleth me that he trusteth that he shall be all whole within a right short time. . . . Item, as for me, I am in good case, blessed be God, and in no jeopardy of my life as me list myself, for I am at my liberty if need be. . . . There are killed upon the field, half a mile from Barnet, on Easter Sunday, the Earl of Warwick, the Marquis Montague, Sir William Tyrell, Sir Lewis Johns, and divers other esquires of our country, Godmerston and Booth. And on the king's party, the Lord Cromwell, the Lord Say, Sir Humphrey Bourchier of our country, which is a sore moaned man here, and other people of both parties to the number of more than a thousand."

Defoe indicates the site of the field of Barnet fight, saying that "it is a green spot near King's End, between St. Albans and Hatfield Road, a little before they meet." In 1740 a stone column was erected on which is a long inscription, with full particulars of the battle.