a splendid perspective of over one hundred and fifty feet. The steps of the grand staircase are also of the purest marble. The Library, Council room, and Sculpture gallery are all most beautifully decorated.

The Library is used for a waiting room for deputations, which as soon as the Queen is ready to receive them pass across the Sculpture Gallery into the hall, and thence ascend by the Grand Stairway, through the Ante-Room and the Green Drawing-room to the Throne room. The Library and adjoining rooms are fitted up in a most gaudy fashion, there being a sad want of taste displayed, either by her Majesty or her uphol sterer, but by which I am not able to say.

The Sculpture Gallery contains the busts of leading statesmen of all countries, and chief among them I noticed one of Prince Albert, the late husband of the Queen, mounted on a fine pedestal. Busts of all the members of the royal family, male and female, are also here. That of the Princess Louisa English face; she is said to

is a charming, innocent looking be deeply in love with a rich Catholic nobleman of the Duke of Norfolk's family.

The Picture Gallery has fine skylights so as to throw a shaded light on the works of art below, and here are to be found the master pieces of the Dutch and Flemish schools, gems of Reynolds, Watteau, Titian, Albert Durer, Rembrandt, Teniers, Ostade, Cuyps, Wouvermans, and others, formerly the collection in great part of George IV.

The Yellow Drawing room, a superb apartment, has a series of paintings in panels of the royal family, there being full length pictures of Queen Victoria, looking very fat, with the crown upon her head, and Prince Albert in his costume of Knight of the Garter, a dress which is supremely ridiculous in these days when none but priests and academicians wear such drapery.

The Throne Room is a gaudy looking apartment, very large and spacious, and like all the rooms in Buckingham palace having a very low ceiling, the prevailing decoration being curtains of striped satin, and the alcoves are hung in rich crimson

velvet relieved or rather bedizened with an nearly obscured gilding. William IV, the sailor king, hated this palace for its ugliness and discomfort, and this all the more that he was used to sleeping in a hammock aboard his own frigate.

The Marble Arch, an immense pile of stone now at the corner of Piccadilly and Hyde Park, formerly occupied the central position in this building, and was erected in its present position at a cost of thirty-one thousand pounds.

When the present Queen had her first child the palace was found so uncomfortable that she had to have the nursery removed to the attic, and there, while the royal child was getting its teeth cut, the Lord Chamberlain of England, who had charge of the improvements, was boiling glue and making French polish in the basement, so that altogether the queen of the greatest nation of the earth, subsequent to her honeymoon, was no better housed than a poor family in New York, dwelling in a respectable tenement house.

Parliament, however, was kind enough to grant the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds to alter and repair the building, and accordingly the palace was made habitable for her Majesty.

The Ball Room is one hundred and thirty-nine feet in length. The Supper Room is seventy-six by sixty feet-with a promenade gallery one hundred and nine feet in length, and twenty-one feet wide. There is a riding school attached, with a mews or stable for horses; here the state carriages and coaches are kept at an expense, for flunkies, grooms, masters of the horse, stable boys, feed for horses and labor, of thirty-six thousand pounds, or over two hundred thousand dollars annually.

I was allowed as a great favor to inspect the Queen's library, which is very handsomely fitted up, and wherever the eye rested for a moment it was sure to find a picture or bust of Prince Albert. There were a number of small tables of inlaid ivory, mother of pearl, and gold, covered with handsomely bound volumes of Shakespeare and other English poets. I also saw a finely bound copy of the Memoirs of the Queen, which it is supposed was written by her Majesty. This is a mistake, how

ever, as the entire book was written by a secretary of hers from some scanty notes provided by her, and from personal recollections. The Queen was nine months dictating the work before its publication. The Queen was in the habit of sitting four hours a day giving these reminiscences of her husband, and during this time she always had a glass of sherry and a biscuit by her side.

Windsor Palace although not in London-being about an hours' ride from that metropolis, is still so near, and within it so much of the life of the present Queen of England has been passed, that a description of it may not be out of place here. It is a large and magnificent castle situated on the river Thames. From its battlements the view is one of the finest in England. A vast panorama extending as far as the eye can reach. All flat-the faint, bare, blue horizontal line, scarcely discernible from the clouds, so distant is it, as straight as the boundary of a calm sea-and yet how infinitely varied! Everything seems in harmony around us, as the sun falls in slanting and roseate beams on grass, tree, flower, castle and river. What would such an expanse of land be in any other country but England, which is, in itself, a huge landscape garden?

A lovely river, to which the hackneyed illustration of "a stream of molten gold" might well be applied, from the silent roll of its glittering waters, as if impeded by their own rich weight, now flashing like a strip of the sun's self, through broad meadows, whose green is scarcely less dazzling-now lost in shady nooks of wondrous and refreshing coolness.

Trees of various species and growth, singly, in clumps, and in rows, are everywhere. Little bright-looking villages, with their white spires, or grey towers, are dotted all over the scene. Beyond where I stand, on the ramparts of the Castle, I can see the Gothic turrets and spires of Eton College, founded by Henry of Lancaster, flanked by oak and birch trees, and above us, on this delightful day in autumn, the banner of St. George is floating right saucily, denoting that this Martial Keep is a royal fortress and a hereditary residence of the Sovereigns of England.

Windsor Castle has been the abode of royalty from the time of the Saxon Kings. It was while King John lived at Windsor, that the barons obtained from him Magna Charta. Cromwell has held his republican courts in Windsor, and Charles I lies buried in its Chapel Royal.

James, the Royal poet and King of Scotland, has visited here, and David, another Scottish monarch, was a prisoner in its gloomy towers. Here was instituted the Order of the Garter by Edward, who was "every inch a King," and some of the most splendid pageantries and courtly ceremonies of history have been enacted within the walls of Windsor Castle. In its vast forests, Herne, the Diabolical Hunter, has chased the Phantom Deer to the tally-ho of unearthly horns.

Edward, the Confessor, held a court here, and assigned the Manor of Windsor to the Abbot and Monks of Westminster. William de Wykeham, the great philanthropist and scholar, who founded Winchester School and the New College at Oxford, was appointed Clerk of the Works at Windsor to superintend the reconstruction of the Castle, in 1356, and his fee from Edward III for the service was one shilling a day while he remained in the town, and two shillings a day when he went elsewhere upon business.

The Castle is divided into a great number of apartments, many of which are memorable for their historical recollections, and among them are St. George's Chapel, Beaufort Chapel, the Round Tower, the North Terrace, the Audience Chamber, the Vandyck Gallery, the Queen's Drawing Room, the State AnteRoom, the Grand Vestibule, the Waterloo Chamber, the Grand Ball Room, St. George's Hall, the Guard Chamber, the Queen's Presence Chamber, the King's Closet, the Queen's Private Closet, the King's Drawing Room, the Throne Room, the State Apartments, and the Private Apartments. The Home Park attached to the Castle is a private garden in which the Queen walks or rides while residing at Windsor.

In St. George's Chapel, a beautiful little edifice, are hung the banners of the Knights of the Order of the Garter, and under each banner is the carved stall, made of wood, on which each Knight of the Chapter sits, at the installation of a new

member, or when any grand ceremony may make their presence necessary. In the groined roof above the banners, are worked the arms of Edward the Black Prince, IIenry VI, Edward IV, Henry VII, and the succeeding English Sovereigns. The helmets, swords, and mantles of the Knights, together with the brass plates, recording their titles, are also to be seen here. In this Chapel is buried the crumbled dust of poor Jane Seymour, one of Henry VIII's unfortunate wives and the mother of Edward VI, who reformed the Prayer Book and Liturgy of the Church of England. The body of Charles I also lies here, but he was more fortunate than Jane Seymour, whose memory is almost forgotten.

In the Beaufort Chapel is the family tomb of that perverse old idiot of a king, George III, in which repose the ashes of his children and Queen; the Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria, Princess Charlotte, William IV, uncle to Queen Victoria, the royal blackguard and scoundrel George IV, the Princess Augusta, who was believed to have been insane, and Queen Adelaide.

It is in the Beaufort Chapel that the Poor or Military Knights of St. George's College, assemble to pray and beseech the Almighty for the health and welfare of the Queen of England, and for the Most Noble Companions of the Order of the Garter, to whom the Poor Knights cling as a species of indigent parasites. The Order of Poor Knights was established by act of Parliament of Edward IV, in the name of the "Poor Knights of St. George's College," and was to consist of a Dean, 12 Secular Canons, 13 Priests, 4 Clerks, 6 Choristers, and 24 "Alms Knights."

At divine service in the Beaufort Chapel, these old, brokendown looking men may be seen, on every festival, and on all occasions when services are held, praying for the reigning Sovereign of England. For this service they receive bread, cheese, beer, and meat, ten times a week. I saw these worn, meeklooking men, who seemed to glide rather than walk during service, but it seemed to me that very little prayers were uttered by them for the Sovereign, as they all had a vacant,