Chapter VI: Part 6

The perspective is terminated by a porticoed gallery, ornamented with fountains and marble columns, like the Patio of Myrtles in the Alhambra. The canal turns sharply and you then enter other enclosures ornamented with water-works and whose walls still retain traces of the frescoes of the Sixteenth Century representing rustic architecture and distant views. In the centre of one of these basins of water, a gigantic oleander of a singular brilliancy and incomparable beauty rises like an immense basket of flowers. At the time that I saw it, it seemed like an explosion of blossoms, or a bouquet of vegetable fireworks; its ruddy hue was so splendid and vigorous,--indeed almost clamorous, if one may apply that word to colours,--as to dim the hue of the most vermilion rose. Its lovely flowers leaped with all the ardour of desire towards the pure light of the sky; and its noble leaves, shaped expressly by nature for a crown of glory and sprinkled by the spray of the fountain, sparkled in the sunshine like emeralds. Never did anything inspire me with a higher sentiment of the beautiful than this rose-bay of the Generalife.

The water is brought to the gardens down a very steep inclined plane, bordered by little walls, forming on each side a kind of parapet, supporting canals hollowed out and lined with large tiles through which the water runs beneath the open sky with the gayest and liveliest chatter in the world. At yard intervals, well-supplied water-jets burst forth from the centre of little basins and shoot their crystal aigrettes into the thick foliage of the groves of laurels whose branches interlace above them. The mountain gushes with water on every side; at each step a spring starts out, and you continually hear at your side the murmuring of some rivulet turned from its course, and going to supply a fountain, or to carry refreshment to the foot of some tree. The Arabs have carried the art of irrigation to the highest degree; their hydraulic-works attest the most advanced state of civilization; these works still exist to-day, and it is to them that Grenada owes the reputation it has of being the Paradise of Spain, and of enjoying eternal spring in an African climate. An arm of the Darro has been turned out of its course by the Arabs and carried for more than two leagues along the hill of the Alhambra.

From the Belvedere of the Generalife you can clearly see the outline of the Alhambra with its enclosure of reddish, half-ruined towers, and its pieces of wall which rise and fall with the undulations of the mountain. The Palace of Charles V., which is not visible from the side of the city, stands out with its square and heavy mass, gilded with a pale reflection of sunlight, upon the damask-like slopes of the Sierra Nevada, whose white ridges are strongly notched against the sky. The bell-tower of Saint-Marie lifts its Christian silhouette above the Moorish battlements. A few cypresses thrust their sorrowful leaves through the crevices in the walls, in the midst of all this light and azure sky, like a melancholy thought at a joyous festival. The slopes of the hill running down towards the Darro and the ravine of Los Molinos disappear beneath an ocean of verdure. It is one of the most beautiful views that can be imagined.

On the other side, as if to form a contrast with so much verdure, there rises an uncultivated, scorched, tawny mountain with patches of ocre and burnt Sienna which is called La Silla del Moro, on account of some ruins of buildings upon its summit. It was from here that King Boabdil used to view the Arabian horsemen jousting in the Vega with Christian knights. The memory of the Moors is still vivid in Grenada. You would think that they left the city only yesterday, and, if we should judge of them by their traces, it is a pity that they ever left it at all. What southern Spain requires is African civilization and not the civilization of Europe, which is not in sympathy with the heat of the climate, or the passions it inspires.

CHÂTEAU DE CHENONCEAUX

JULES LOISELEUR

Unlike so many other _châteaux_ of Blaissons and Touraine, Chenonceaux awakens only gay and happy thoughts. Chambord possesses the calm gravity of a monastery; Ambroise is a prison; Blois bears upon its face its blot of blood. All the other retreats of the royal Valois and all the _châteaux_ of their courtiers, grouped in such number upon the banks of the Cher, the Vienne, and the Loire--Loches, Chinon, Plessis-lez-Tours, Luynes, Saumur, Brissac,--speak of treachery, perfidy, revenge, conspiracy and all the wicked tendencies of human nature. Chenonceaux alone recalls only memories of youth, elegance, poetry, and love. There is no blood upon its stones. The gentlest and the most charming figures of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century, Diane de Poitiers, Mary Stuart, Gabrielle and Françoise de’Mercœur come in succession to animate that smiling nature and to reflect their fair faces in its clear waters. Catherine de Medicis, in passing through this beautiful place, here dropped a little of her cold and imperious gravity: she has left only the memory of that orgy-like and splendid banquet that cost more than a million of our money, and where Madame de Sauve, half naked, was the stewardess.

The widow of Henri III., promenading in her long robes of mourning, lent it another charm,--that of melancholy; and when Rousseau, at last raised that voice there which could gather together tempests, it was not philosophy, nor social conditions, nor the rights of man of which he spoke: it was still love and poetry.

Chenonceaux, by means of its position, its architecture, and its history, is so near the other _châteaux_ on the banks of the Loire, neighbouring and contemporary pearls, that it is impossible to detach it from that jewel-case. However, it is not on the Loire, the river of severe horizons and majestic wearisomeness; it is on a less proud and more smiling little river, the Cher, three leagues from Amboise, that this palace of Armida was built. It rears itself upon the bosom of this charming stream which stops here in a lazy curve as if to linger and bathe its walls, delighting in reflecting those graceful towers and enchanted gardens in its liquid depths. No other palace that I know rises thus, like Venus from the breast of the waves, without any link to the earth save a single bridge at one of its extremities. It was a woman who had this charming idea that gives to the _château_ a somewhat fairy-like and supernatural effect: for Chenonceaux is not, as is too often believed, the work of Thomas Bohier, but of his wife, who consecrated to this work, conceived in love, the treasures that her husband sent her from Italy. There are two other women, Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de’Medici who completed while enlarging the thought of Catherine Briçonnet. It seems that women only could possess a sufficiently light hand to touch such a delicate work and to design the plan.

It was at the north-east corner of the court of honour, between the stream and the gardener’s house, that MM. Sechan and Déplechein placed themselves to paint the picture used for the scenery in the second act of _Les Huguenots_. This choice proved a familiar general view. No other spot shows Chenonceaux in a more complete and picturesque aspect. Seen from this point, the _château_ presents itself obliquely, which enables the eye to embrace at the same time the principal façade and the entire construction of the western side, from the apsis of the chapel to the end of the gallery that crosses the Cher.

The foreground of the picture is charming.

At the right and in the corner, the court of honour precedes its royal avenue of plantains and ends with its stone balustrades. Behind this balustrade, stands the beautiful tower with a roof like a pepper box, which is used as the porter’s lodge, and which, built upon the firm ground, seems like a timid sister watching her big sisters bathing their feet in the river without daring to follow them.

In the middle distance, is the bridge with its three unequal arches and its heavy buttresses alongside of their half moons in brackets. Beyond the bridge, is the principal façade, flanked with two corbelled towers presenting under a flying buttress its large caryatides, its two balconies in hemicycle, and three charming dormer windows that crown it. Farther along in the centre of the picture, is the apsis of the chapel with its long lancets flaming in the sun, supported, like the principal front, by those heavy courses of stone in which are the kitchen offices of the castle; then comes the beautiful eastern front that surmounts the great arch and occupies the centre of the stream which, as well as the whole corresponding western front, must certainly be attributed to Diane de Poitiers, for its windows, its architrave and all the details of its entablature bear the mark of the reign of Henri II.

Finally, to the left of the picture, are the five arches of the bridge built for Diane to connect the left bank of the Cher with the great pavilion and, above this bridge, the two stages of galleries constructed by Androuet du Cerceau for Catherine de’Medici, with their little turrets with arched windows corresponding to the peers, and forming so many terraces for the second gallery.

All this, with the river for the foreground and with the large trees on both banks for a frame, and the trees of the gardens for perspective, and the tops, formerly gilded, of the gallery and the large pavilion, the ornamented chimneys, the peaked roofs and the vanes of the turrets, peaks, dormer windows, chimneys and weather-vanes, vaporously melting into the beautiful sky of Touraine; all this, I say, forms a complete whole that would ravish any painter and one that in truth is worthy of the honour paid to it by M. Scribe at the Opéra. No false tone and no ungraceful nor violent line disturbs the harmony of this beautiful picture. Minds that love parallelism and symmetry may regret undoubtedly that the enthusiasm of political life did not permit Catherine de’Medici to complete that beautiful conception and build upon the left bank of the Cher a large pavilion similar to that on the right bank: the gallery, which does not come to-day any further than the steep bank of the river, would then have occupied the centre of the building. But, perhaps, there is in this incompleteness of Chenonceaux, which permits everybody to finish it in dreams according to his pleasure, something that saves it from banality; perhaps it gains, instead of losing, by exciting that admiration mingled with regrets and also with criticism which the greater number of men, by an inherent weakness of nature, prefer to the enthusiasm without reservation that is the right of a perfect work.

DUBLIN CASTLE

LADY WILDE

Few amongst us who tread the Dublin of the present in all its beauty, think of the Dublin of the past in all its contrasted insignificance. True, the eternal features are the same; the landscape setting of the city is coeval with creation. Tyrian, Dane, and Norman have looked as we look, and with hearts as responsive to Nature’s loveliness, upon the emerald plains, the winding rivers, the hills draperied in violet and gold, the mountain gorges, thunder-riven, half veiled by the foam of the waterfall, and the eternal ocean encircling all; scenes where God said a city should arise, and the mountain and the ocean are still, as of old, the magnificent heritage of beauty conferred on our metropolis.

But the early races, whether from the southern sea or northern plain, did little to aid the beauty of nature with the products of human intellect. Dublin, under the Danish rule, consisted only of a fortress, a church, and one rude street. Under the rule of the Normans, those great civilizers of the western world, those grand energetic organizers, temple and tower builders, it rose gradually into a beautiful capital, the chief city of Ireland, the second city of the empire. At first the rudimental metropolis gathered round the castle, as nebulæ round a central sun, and from this point it radiated westward and southward; the O’Briens on the south, the O’Connors on the west, the O’Neils on the north, perpetually hovering on the borders, but never able to regain the city, never able to dislodge the brave Norman garrison who had planted their banners on the castle walls. In that castle, during the seven hundred years of its existence, no Irishman of the old race has ever held rule for a single hour.

And what a history it has of tragedies and splendours; crowned and discrowned monarchs flit across the scene, and tragic destinies, likewise, may be recorded of many a viceroy! Piers Gaveston, Lord Lieutenant of King Edward, murdered; Roger Mortimer--“The Gentle Mortimer”--hanged at Tyburn; the Lord Deputy of King Richard II. murdered by the O’Briens; whereupon the King came over to avenge his death, just a year before he himself was so ruthlessly murdered at Pomfret Castle. Two viceroys died of the plague; how many more were plagued to death, history leaves unrecorded; one was beheaded at Drogheda; three were beheaded on Tower Hill. Amongst the names of illustrious Dublin rulers may be found those of Prince John, the boy Deputy of thirteen; Prince Lionel, son of Edward III., who claimed Clare in right of his wife, and assumed the title of Clarence from having conquered it from the O’Briens.

The great Oliver Cromwell was the Lord-Lieutenant of the Parliament, and he in turn appointed his son Henry to succeed him. Dire are the memories connected with Cromwell’s reign here, both to his own party and to Ireland. Ireton died of the plague after the siege of Limerick; General Jones died of the plague after the surrender of Dungarvon; a thousand of Cromwell’s men died of the plague before Waterford. The climate, in its effect upon English constitutions, seems to be the great Nemesis of Ireland’s wrongs.

Strange scenes, dark, secret, and cruel, have been enacted in that gloomy pile. No one has told the full story yet. It will be a Ratcliffe romance of dungeons and treacheries, of swift death or slow murder. God and St. Mary were invoked in vain for the luckless Irish prince or chieftain that was caught in that Norman stronghold; but that was in the old time--long, long ago. Now the castle courts are crowded only with loyal and courtly crowds, gathered to pay homage to the illustrious successor of a hundred viceroys.

The strangest scene, perhaps, in the annals of viceroyalty, was when Thomas Fitzgerald (Silken Thomas), son of the Earl of Kildare, and Lord-Lieutenant in his father’s absence, took up arms for Irish independence. He rode through the city with seven score horsemen, in shirts of mail and silken fringe on their head-pieces (hence the name Silken Thomas), to St. Mary’s Abbey, and there entering the council chamber, he flung down the sword of state upon the table, and bade defiance to the king and his ministers; then hastening to raise an army, he laid siege to Dublin Castle, but with no success. Silken Thomas and five uncles were sent to London, and there executed; and sixteen Fitzgeralds were hanged and quartered at Dublin. By a singular fatality, no plot laid against Dublin Castle ever succeeded; though to obtain possession of this foreign fortress was the paramount wish of all Irish rebel leaders. This was the object with Lord Maguire and his papists, with Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his republicans, with Emmet and his enthusiasts, with Smith O’Brien and his nationalists--yet they all failed. Once only, during seven centuries, the green flag waved over Dublin Castle, with the motto--“Now or Never! Now and for Ever!” It was when Tyrconnel held it for King James.

In the ancient stormy times of Norman rule, the nobility naturally gathered round the Castle. Skinner’s Row was the “May Fair” of mediæval Dublin, Hoey’s Court, Castle Street, Cook Street, Fishamble Street, Bridge Street, Werburgh Street, High Street, Golden Lane, Back Lane, etc., were the fashionable localities inhabited by lords and bishops, chancellors and judges; and Thomas Street was the grand prado where viceregal pomp and Norman pride were oftenest exhibited.

SANS SOUCI AND OTHER PRUSSIAN PALACES

WILLIAM HOWITT

Berlin has its public gardens, and its popular music and dances, as well as any other German city; but they who do not care to visit these will find pleasure in walking as far as the Kreutzberg, a little eminence, a novelty here, at a little distance from the city, on which is erected a Gothic cross or monument of metal, in memory of those who died in the war; and figures of the chief leaders in it occupy niches, and the names of all the great battles in which the Prussians were engaged, are exhibited on the different sides. Charlottenburg, a few miles from Berlin, is also not only a charming palace in extensive and pleasant gardens, but of great interest from the reposing statue of the amiable Queen Louise, by Rauch, which is in a little temple in the garden.

But Potsdam is the great paradise of this neighbourhood, as we may be allowed to call it, for though nearly twenty English miles distant, a railway conveys you there in forty minutes. Here the scene is indeed changed! Here, instead of sand and monotony, you have hills, water, woods, every thing which is attractive in nature. What a splendid situation were this for a capital! The city on the plain, backed by these beautiful hills, with every possible variety of site for villas and pleasure gardens. What woods and hills, and the beautiful river Havell spreading itself broad and winding, like a succession of fine lakes! Why was not Berlin placed where Potsdam is? Possibly the Havell, broad as it looks, may not be so navigable as the Sprey, and there may lie the secret, or what a capital would it be here!

Frederick the Great, however, duly appreciated the beauty of this neighbourhood. Here he delighted to retire. Steam has now converted Potsdam into a suburb of Berlin, and pours on all holidays its thousands into it, without which Potsdam were a retirement and a solitude still, for grass grows in its streets. But who cares for Potsdam itself, as it lies in its hollow, with its great old palace, and great old public buildings and barracks, and avenues of great trees, except that its old church contains the tomb of Frederick the Great, on which Napoleon heaped the incense of his praise, and from which he stole the old warrior’s sword. But the hills on the Havell, and the views of the Havell from them, the rich meadows, the wild forest scenes--these are what justify Frederick’s fondness for this spot, and who can enough enjoy them? That Frederick enjoyed them, the palaces which he has scattered through them with an extraordinary prodigality, sufficiently testify: the Palace in Potsdam, the Palace of Sans Souci, the Marble Palace, the New Palaces. That the present race enjoy them, various lovely villas, as the Charlottenhof, Grünecke, and others shew. That the last king enjoyed them, the Pfauen-Insel is a charming proof. If any one wishes to find the lost fairy-land, he must steer his course along the Havell, through a wilderness of pine woods to the Pfauen-Insel, and there he will acknowledge that he has discovered it. Around amid hills shaggy with forests the Havell pours its deep and dark waters like an inland sea. The world is shut out by the bosky shores and deep pine woods of unknown regions, and in the embracing floods lies the most delicious region which a poet’s fancy could conjure up, or which nature and art, in mutual labour, can construct from the ordinary materials of the earth. Shores of softest green, most ravishing lawns, flowers of superbest dyes and in gorgeous masses, trees of stateliest growth and gracefullest beauty of pendant boughs, invite you ever to scenes where you may wander for hours, and every few moments encounter some new surprise. Here feudal towers rise above the flood, with heraldic banners flapping over the battlements; here stately barge and light shallop lie anchored in some lonely creek; here slope sunny uplands under scattered oaks, where the shepherd watches his flock. Here you come upon a noble conservatory, beautiful with the palms and dates and glorious blossoms of tropical regions, and aromatic with their odours. If you would have any illusion to persuade you, beyond the charms of nature and of summer, that you are in a region of enchantment, you have it. You hear the roar of the lion, the cry of the jackal, and the scream of birds unknown in these climates. You imagine that some scene in Tasso or Ariosto is about to be repeated, and find actually wild beasts of all sorts in different dens and cages in various parts of the island. Such were the amusements of a king here, after he had helped to bind the great wild beast of the age on the rocks of St. Helena; and a more enchanting scene for a day’s excursion he could not have left for the pleasure of his subjects.

Amongst the numerous royal palaces we must say a good word for the New Palace, as it is called, although it has been often and much abused. If not in the purest taste, it still possesses a certain grandeur in its enormous extent, and prodigality of colonnades, porticoes, and statues connected with it. It lies low, in the meadow below Potsdam, but has a fine solitude of woods and quaint gardens about it. It is itself a good and cheerful house, and contains many paintings of much merit and beauty. It has also a theatre, in which have recently been represented, before the court, some of the dramatic pieces of Tieck. If this palace were inhabited by the king, with a full and gay court, it would, with the necessary life and bustle about it, produce far from a despicable impression.

Then there is, in the wood near, that little temple containing the second and most beautiful reposing figure of the late Queen by Rauch. We had heard this effigy much praised for its beauty; but the beauty is that of mind and heart. Representatives of far higher physical beauty we have often seen. The somewhat high cheek bones, the shape of the nose, and the general contour indeed of the countenance, depart from the pure ideal of personal beauty, but a still higher beauty distinguishes this charming statue. It is that perfect sweetness of disposition; that spirit baptized in heavenly affection; that wife-like devotion; that high and dauntless, and holy patriotism, dwelling in a meek and lowly nature, which made this excellent queen adored by the people when alive, and which glorify her image here in the cold stone.

Not far from this palace is Charlottenhof, the beautiful little villa in the Herculaneum style built by the present king, when Crown-Prince, for himself. It is fitted up with a simplicity befitting a private gentleman, but with a classical purity of taste which makes all beautiful. But Sans Souci is the great attraction of the neighbourhood. It is a mere villa perched on a hill just above Potsdam, and surrounded by the most lovely views over the meadows and wild woody banks of the Havell. The hill on which it stands is crowned with gardens in successive terraces. As you approach through the fine meadows and beneath a noble avenue of trees, broad flights of steps, ascending from terrace to terrace up to the house, and the lower part of the house half concealed from view by the swell of the hill, give a very singular appearance to the whole. It seems as if the house was surrounded by a piazza, and that those flights of steps ascended to the top, instead of to the bottom of the building. As we ascended these long flights of steps, successive terraces of the garden shewed themselves right and left, with their vines and fig-trees loaded with fruit, and with quantities of golden gourds, each perfectly round, large enough to fill a wheelbarrow, lying about; and flowers, in richest autumnal hues, glowed around. Arrived on the summit, nothing can be conceived more delicious. The fine views over the lovely country; the gardens all below you; the space before the palace full of beds of gayest flowers, and orange trees standing everywhere in blossom, diffusing through the whole air their delicious aroma. Trees of splendid growth added their beauty to the spot; the mill of the sturdy old miller shewing itself amongst them; and from a circular colonnade, on the other side of the house, a brownish, wildish, burnt-up sort of a country, with wind-mills, and an artificial ruin of a Grecian temple on a woody hill opposite, constructed with better effect than such things generally are, presented a fit landscape for an old painter.

Every part of this place abounds with recollections of the victorious old Fritz. At each end of the garden, in a green plot, are the graves of his horse and dogs, eleven in number, he having ordered himself to be laid there to complete the dozen; an order not complied with. In the house remain many memorials of him; ’mongst them the clock, which stopped exactly as he died, and his library, in which his own works are conspicuous. One volume of his poems stood open at this curious passage:

Mais, quels sont ces cries d’ Alegresse!
Quels Chants! Quelles acclamations!
Les Français plein de son yvresse
Semble vainqueur des Nations.
Il l’ est; et voilà qui s’ avance
La Pompe du jeune Louis:
L’Anglais a perdu sa Balance,
L’Autricien, son insolence,
Et la Balave encore surpris
En grondant bénit La Clemence
De ce Héros, dont l’ indulgence----

The wall of the room occupied here by Voltaire is painted all over monkeys and parrots. They tell you that Frederick, being desirous to have a portrait of the ugly old Frenchman, to which he would not consent, the king employed a painter to observe him by stealth from the next room whenever the door was opened, which Voltaire becoming aware of, clapped a screen before his table; and Frederick to mortify him, caused the whole of the walls of his room, the first opportunity, to be thus adorned with monkeys and parrots, as indicative of his person and loquacity. Poor Frederick paid dearly in his lifetime, in annoyance, for his propensity to French philosophy; and his country paid still more so for it after his death.

WHITEHALL PALACE

LEIGH HUNT

The whole district containing all that collection of streets and houses, which extends from Scotland Yard to Parliament Street, and from the river side, with its wharfs, to St. James’s Park, and which is still known by the general appellation of Whitehall, was formerly occupied by a sumptuous palace and its appurtenances, the only relics of which, perhaps the noblest specimen, is the beautiful edifice built by Inigo Jones, and retaining its old name of the Banqueting-House.

As this palace was the abode of a series of English sovereigns, beginning with Henry the Eighth, who took it from Wolsey, and terminating with James the Second, on whose downfall it was destroyed by fire, we are now in the very thick of the air of royalty.

The site of Whitehall was originally occupied by a mansion built by Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent and Chief Justice of England in the reign of Henry the Third, one of the ancestors of the present Marquess of Clanricarde. De Burgh bequeathed it to the brotherhood of the Black Friars, near “Oldborne,” in whose church he was buried; the Brotherhood sold it to Walter Gray, Archbishop of York, who left it to his successors in that see as the archiepiscopal residence, which procured it the name of York Place; and under that name, two centuries and a half afterwards, it became celebrated for the pomp and splendour of the “full-blown” priest, Wolsey, the magnificent butcher’s son. Wolsey, on highly probable evidence, is thought to have so improved and enlarged the mansion of his predecessors, as to have in a manner rebuilt it, and given it its first royalty of aspect: but, as we shall see by and by, it was not called Whitehall, nor occupied anything like the space it did afterwards, till its seizure by the Cardinal’s master.

On the Cardinal’s downfall, Henry seized his house and goods, and converted York Place into a royal residence, under the title of Westminster Place, then, for the first time, called also Whitehall.

“It is not impossible,” says Mr. Brayley (Londiniana Vol. II., p. 27), “that the Whitehall, properly so called, was erected by Wolsey, and obtained its name from the newness and freshness of its appearance, when compared with the ancient buildings of York Place. Shakespeare in his play of _King Henry VIII._, makes one of the interlocutors say, in describing the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn:--

‘So she parted,
And with the same full state paced back again
To York Place, where the feast is held.’

To this is replied--

‘Sir, you
Must no more call it York Place--that is past.
For since the Cardinal fell, that title’s lost.
’Tis now the King’s, and called Whitehall.’”

It was in Whitehall that Henry made his ill-assorted marriage with Anne Boleyn; Dr. Lingard says in a “garret”; Stowe says in the royal “closet.” It is likely enough that the ceremony was hurried and sudden;--a fit of will, perhaps, during his wine; and if the closet was not ready, the garret was. The clergyman who officiated was shortly afterwards made a bishop.

Henry died in Whitehall; so fat, that he was lifted in and out his chamber and sitting-room by means of machinery.

“He was “_somewhat_ gross, or, as we tearme it, bourlie,” says time-serving Holinshed.

He _laboured_ under the burden of an extreme fit and unwieldy body,” says noble Herbert of Cherbury.

It was under this Prince (as already noticed) that the palace of the Archbishop of York first became the “King’s Palace at Westminster,” and expanded into that mass of houses which stretched to St. James’s Park. He built a gate-house which stood across what is now the open street, and a gallery connecting the two places, and overlooking a tilt-yard; and on the park-side he built a cockpit, a tennis-court, and alleys for bowling; for although he put women to death, he was fond of manly sports. He was also a patron of the fine arts, and gave an annuity and rooms in the palace to the celebrated Holbein, who is said to have designed the gate, as well as decorated the interior.

The reader is to bear in mind that the street in front of the modern Banqueting-House was always open, as it is now, from Charing Cross to King Street, narrowing opposite to the south end of the Banqueting-House, at which point the gate looked up it towards the Cross. Just opposite the Banqueting-House on the site of the present Horse-Guards, was the Tilt-yard. The whole mass of houses and gardens on the river side comprised the royal residence. Down this open street, then, just as people walk now, we may picture to ourselves Henry coming with his regal pomp, and Wolsey with his priestly; Sir Thomas More strolling thoughtfully, perhaps talking with quiet-faced Erasmus; Holbein, looking about him with an artist’s eyes; Surrey coming gallantly in his cloak and feather, as Holbein has painted him; and a succession of Henry’s wives, with their flitting groups on horseback or under canopy;--handsome, stately Catherine of Arragon; laughing Anne Boleyn; quiet Jane Seymour; gross-bodied but sensible Anne of Cleves; demure Catherine Howard, who played such pranks before marriage; and disputatious yet buxom Catherine Parr, who survived one tyrant to become the broken-hearted wife of a smaller one. Down this road, also came gallant companies of knights and squires, to the tilting-yard; but of them we shall have more to say in the time of Elizabeth.

We see little of Edward the Sixth, and less of Lady Jane Grey and Queen Mary, in connection with Whitehall. Edward once held the Parliament there, on account of his sickly condition; and he used to hear Latimer preach in the Privy Garden (still so called), where a pulpit was erected for him on purpose. As there are gardens there still to the houses erected on the spot, one may stand by the rails, and fancy we hear the voice of the rustical but eloquent and honest prelate, rising through the trees.

It was under Elizabeth that Whitehall shone out in all its romantic splendour. It was no longer the splendour of Wolsey alone, nor of Henry alone, or with a great name by his side now and then; but of a Queen, surrounded and worshipped through a long reign by a galaxy of the brightest minds and most chivalrous persons ever assembled in English history.

Here she comes, turning the corner from the Strand, under a canopy of state, leaving the noisier, huzzaing multitude behind the barriers that mark the precincts of the palace, and bending her eyes hither and thither, in acknowledgment of the kneeling obeisances of the courtiers. Beside her are Cecil and Knolles, and Northampton, and Bacon’s father; or, later in life, Leicester, and Burleigh, and Sir Philip Sydney, and Greville, and Sir Francis Drake, (and Spenser is looking on); or, later still, Essex and Raleigh, and Bacon himself, and Southampton, Shakespeare’s friend, with Shakespeare among the spectators. We shall see her, by and by, at that period, as brought to life to us in the description of Hentzner the traveller. At present (as we have her at this moment in our eye) she is younger, of a large and tall, but well-made figure, with fine eyes, and finer hands, which she is fond of displaying. We are too apt to think of Elizabeth as thin and elderly, and patched up; but for a good period of her life she was plump and personable, warranting the history of the robust romps of the Lord Admiral, Seymour; and till her latter days (and even then, as far as her powers went), we are always to fancy her at once spirited and stately of carriage, impulsive (except on occasions of ordinary ceremony), and ready to manifest her emotions in look and voice, whether as woman or Queen; in a word, a sort of Henry the Eighth corrected by a female nature and a better understanding--or perhaps an Anne Boleyn, enlarged, and made less feminine by the father’s grossness. The Protestants have represented her as too staid, and the Catholics as too violent and sensual. According to the latter, Whitehall was a mere sink of iniquity. It was not likely to be so, for many reasons; but neither, on the other hand, do we take it to have been anything like the pattern of self-denial which some fond writers have supposed. Where there is power, and leisure, and luxury, though of the most legitimate kind, and refinement, though of the most intellectual, self-denial on the side of enjoyment is not apt to be the reigning philosophy; nor would it reasonably be looked for in any court, at all living in wealth and splendour.

Imagine the sensations of Elizabeth, when she first set down in the palace at Whitehall, after escaping the perils of imputed illegitimacy, of confinement for party’s sake and for religion’s, and all the other terrors of her father’s reign and of Mary’s, danger of death itself not excepted. She was a young Queen of twenty-five years of age, healthy, sprightly, good-looking, with plenty of will, power, and imagination; and the gallantest spirits of the age were at her feet.

The Court of James the First was a great falling off from that of Elizabeth, in point of decency. It was Sir Toby keeping house after the death of Olivia; or a fox-hunting squire succeeding to the estate of some courtly dame and mingling low life with high.

We have seen court mummeries in the time of Henry the Eighth and pageants in that of Elizabeth. In the time of James, the masquings of the one, and the gorgeous shows of the other, combined to produce the Masque, in its latest and best acceptation; that is, a dramatic exhibition of some brief fable or allegory, uniting the most fanciful poetry and scenery, and generally heightened with a contrast of humour, or an anti-masque. Ben Jonson was their great poetical master in the court of James and Inigo Jones claimed to be their no less masterly and important setter-forth in scene and show. The poet and artist had a quarrel upon this issue, and Inigo’s’ memory suffers from divers biting libels in the works of his adversary. The noble Banqueting-House remains to show that the architect might have had some right to dispute pretensions, even with the author of the _Alchemist_ and the _Sad Shepherd_; for it is a piece of the very music of his art (if we may so speak)--the harmony of proportion. Within these walls, as we now see them, rose, “like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,” the elegant lines of Ben Jonson, breathing court flowers,--the clouds and painted columns of Jones--and the fair faces, gorgeous dresses, and dances, of the beauties that dazzled the young eyesight of the Miltons and Wallers. Ben’s burly body would then break out, as it were, after his more refined soul, in some burlesque anti-masque, now and then not a little coarse; and the sovereign and the poet most probably concluded the night in the same manner, though not at the same table in filling their skins with wine.

The Court of Charles I. was decorum and virtue itself in comparison with that of James. Drunkenness disappeared; there were no scandalous favourites; Buckingham alone retained his ascendency as the friend and assistant; and the king manifested his notions of the royal dignity by a stately reserve. Little remained externally of the old Court but its splendour; and to this a new lustre was given by a taste for painting and the patronage of Rubens and Vandyke. Charles was a great collector of pictures. He was still fonder of poetry than his father, retained Ben Jonson as his laureate, encouraged Sandys, and May, and Carew, and was a fond reader of Spenser and Shakespeare. It was, upon the whole a grave and graceful court, not without an undercurrent of intrigue.

It seems ridiculous to talk of the court of Oliver Cromwell, who had so many severe matters to attend to in order to keep himself on his throne; but he had a court, nevertheless; and however jealously it was watched by the most influential of his adherents, it grew more courtly as his protectorate advanced.

But how shall we speak of the court of Charles II.? of that unblushing seminary for the misdirection of young ladies, which, occupying the ground now inhabited by all which is proper, rendered the mass of buildings by the water’s side, from Charing Cross to the Parliament, one vast--what are we to call it?--

“Chi mi darà le voci e le parole
Convenienti a sì nobil soggetto?”

Let Mr. Pepys explain. Let Clarendon explain. Let all the world explain, who equally reprobate the place and its master, and yet somehow are so willing to hear it reprobated, that they read endless accounts of it, old and new, from the not very bashful _exposé_ of the Count de Grammont, down to the blushing deprecations of Mrs. Jameson.

The Court of James II. is hardly worth mention. It lasted less than four years, and was as dull as himself. The most remarkable circumstance attending it was the sight of friars and confessors, and the brief restoration of Popery. Waller, too, was once seen there; the _fourth_ court of his visiting. There was a poetess also, who appears to have been attached by regard as well as office to the Court of James--Anne Kingswill, better known by her subsequent title of Countess of Winchelsea. The attachment was most probably one of feeling only and good nature, for she had no bigotry of any sort. Dryden, furthermore, was laureate to King James; and in a fit of politic, perhaps real, regret, turned round upon the late court in his famous comparison of it with its predecessor.

James fled from England in December, 1688, and the history of Whitehall terminates with its conflagration ten years afterwards.

THE CASTLE OF KRONBORG

HORACE MARRYAT

The walks in the neighbourhood of Elsinore are charming, particularly that along the Strandrei, by the shore of the Sound--a succession of country houses and fishing villages, and well-kept gardens bright with flowers: they have a well-to-do prosperous air, as everything has in Denmark. An hour’s walk brings you to a maisonette called Dahlsborg, beyond which you turn to enter the forest of Egebæksvang, a favourite summer drive of the Elsinorians.

A ten minutes’ walk, avoiding all dusty roads across the common or waste land which runs down to the seashore--in England it would have been the paradise of geese, cricketers and donkeys, but here it is deserted, except by the sharpshooters, who keep up a cross-fire, practising their targets from eight o’clock till six of an evening--brings us to the Castle of Kronborg.

The road lies between two dirty stagnant ponds, dignified by the appellation of Holger Dansk’s Spectacles: if they fitted his face, he must have had one eye considerably larger than the other. Instead of snoring away his time within the dungeons of Kronborg--his beard growing into the marble table--he had far better employ his leisure moments in cleaning out and sweetening his “brille”; but he only appears, they say, when Mr. Sorensen (the Danish John Bull or Brother Jonathan) really requires his services. Effectual drainage and sanitary reforms are sadly behind-hand, and looked upon as new-fangled vagaries by the inhabitants of the island of Zealand.

If in your early youth you have devoured the _Fabliaux et Contes_, _King Arthur and the Knights of his Round Table_, and other legends of old Romaunce, you will recognize in Holger Dansk,[4] or rather Augier le Danois, an old and favourite acquaintance. Some few years since I brushed him up when I visited the ruins of _La Joyeuse Garde_ and the classic sands of Avalon, on the coast of Brittany. The French romancers assert him to be still confined at Avalon, together with King Arthur, held in durance vile by the enchantments of the fay Morgana. Occasionally she removes from his brow the Lethæan crown, when his services are required to fight against the Paynim for the good and welfare of Christendom.

Morgana, she of the Fata, was own sister to our good King Arthur. With other mighty fairies, she assisted at the birth of Holger the Dane; later she loved him. Seduced by her blandishments, he espoused her: no good ever comes of marrying an old woman, be she mortal or fairy. Holger the Dane slumbers in the dungeons of Kronborg, not at Avalon, as the French would have it, no more than King Arthur, who we all know received Christian burial at Glastonbury; but French romancers do tell such wicked stories. Endless are the traditions, numerous the ballads, of the exploits of this the favourite hero of Danish story: when invoked, after much pressing, and, I must own it, exacting first the promise of “a good dinner and plenty to drink,” he has frequently come to the assistance of fair maidens in their trouble and distress, and fought their battles with his enchanted sword, mounted on his good steed, “Papillon.” Morgana, the fay, has never deserted entirely the country of her beloved: she still sports and exercises her witcheries to favoured mortals, when least expected, among the barren heaths and wide-spreading moors of the ancient provinces of Jutland.

I have no intention, however, of visiting his prison down below: the wind is cast, my limbs are rheumatic--let younger people be more adventurous. But we pass the drawbridge and enter the second gate of the castle. Verses in the Danish tongue by the Scotchman, Bishop Kingo, and the more illustrious pen of Tycho Brahe, adorn the portals and celebrate the erection of the buildings. There is one thing sure in this world--monarchs never allowed their good works to be hid in secret: on every side you see inscriptions, in letters of gold, announcing how Christian V. restored this, and Frederic IV. whitewashed that. But I must give you some account of the history of the castle.

There is no doubt but, from the earliest period of history, a castle of some kind, built for the protection of the Sound, existed on the site or near where the Kronborg now stands. In the year 1238 the preceding fortress of Flynderborg--situated at the other end of the town, near the Strandvei, named after the flounders, of which quantities are taken in front of the batteries--was in a state of excellent repair. This fortress being found unsuited to the exigencies of the times, King Frederic II. determined to rebuild it on a scale of unprecedented grandeur: the whole of the expenses were to be discharged from his privy purse, and the building was to cost his subjects “not one penny.” This was more easy of execution to Frederic, first crowned Protestant sovereign of Denmark, than it would have proved to later monarchs. He had made a good haul of suppressed monasteries, church lands, plate, and treasure--was flush of money, and did not mind spending it. The existing castle was then commenced in the year 1577, and completed in the course of nine years. Bishop Kingo and Tycho Brahe both sung its praises, and the talents of Rubens were called into play--somewhat later I imagine--for the decoration of the chapel. The castle is strongly fortified with double-bastion, moat, and rampart, after the manner of preceding ages.

Kronborg possesses one great advantage over the other Danish buildings of the Sixteenth Century: it is built of fine sandstone, the only specimen in the kingdom. Though quadrangular and four-towered, it is relieved from all appearance of formality by the quaint onion pagoda-like minarets by which its towers are surmounted. The lofty clock turret[5] too, rising from the centre, higher than those which flank the corners, adds to the dignity of the building. Few castles in the space of three hundred years have suffered so little from modern additions and improvement: one tower has unfortunately been destroyed. In an old engraving from Puffendorf of 1688, I see the original had already been altered: it was an eyesore, but, in accordance with the style of the remainder, capped and ornamented. It, however, fell into decay during the reign of Frederic VI., at that unfortunate epoch when taste was bad taste, and art atrocity: it was repaired--square and hideous--a fearful monument of the age. Formerly it served as a telegraph, now as a powder magazine; and unless it be blown up, or the powder becomes damp, will, I fear, remain untouched. You enter the interior court through a richly ornamented gateway, guarded by statues and overhung by a beautiful oriel window, enriched with the arms and ciphers of the founder. Opposite to you stands the chapel (the works of Rubens have long since disappeared); the fittings of the time of Christian IV. have been lately restored, but not too carefully. It is curious to trace, as you can by the turret to the right of the clock, the gradual transition from the Gothic to the Renaissance. The whole of the ornaments are of the latter period; but there is still occasionally a sort of feeling as if the architect was not quite decided in his views: whether he was or not, Kronborg is one of the most perfect specimens of its era--unspoiled, untouched, and unrepaired--to be met with in Europe. It has long ceased to be occupied as a royal residence. One side is alone retained for the use of His Majesty; the rest is occupied by the General Commandant, the officers, and the garrison. Above the entrance of the clock-tower, surmounting the ornaments, appears the head of a huge mastiff, holding in his fore-paws a heart-like shield, with the cipher of Frederic II., and below the favourite device of the King, “T. I. W. B., _Treu ist Wiltbratt_.” The same Wildbratt, whose portrait is above, was the favourite of King Frederic, and bit everybody save his royal master. Over the other door appears the device of his good queen--good Queen Sophia of Mecklenburg--“_Meine Hoffnung zu Gott allein_” (My hope is in God alone). Within the dungeon of the corner tower, that of the restoration--adjoining the wine-cellars of Christian IV., where a jolly fat tun carved in stone above the entrance leaves no doubt of its identity--was situated the torture-chamber in days gone by: none of your papistical virgins, who enticed you to their arms, and larded like a fricandeau, then stuck you brimful of pen-knives, but good wholesome Protestant thumbscrews, boots, and wooden horses, and scavengers’ daughters, such as Queen Bess of glorious memory, and our earlier Tudor sovereigns, to say nothing of later Stuarts loved to employ on their rebellious subjects who refused to convict their masters, rightfully or wrongfully, and bring them to the block--and very persuasive implements they were, I doubt not. In the centre of the court once stood a fountain, tossing the water high in the air: judging from the old engravings, it must have been very ornamental. Some thirty or forty iron hooks, fastened into the wall, remain, once the larder of King Frederic, hung, when game abounded, with deer, hare, and capercailzie--like Bolton Abbey in the olden time--a pretty scene, only too near the torture-chamber. After the peace of 1659, when Skaane was lost to Denmark forever, the windows of Kronborg Castle, which commanded a view of the Swedish coast, were walled up, to exclude a sight which caused so many heart-burnings.

In 1588 was celebrated in the Castle of Kronborg the marriage by procuration of King James VI. of Scotland with Anne, daughter of King Frederic II. of Denmark. Anne was then in her fifteenth year. Marshal Earl Keith acted as proxy. This marriage settled the vexed question of the Orkney and Shetland Islands, pawned to Scotland when the Princess Margaret married King James III. Christian III. meditated an expedition against Mary of Guise, then Regent of Scotland, for their recovery and later offered to repay the 50,000 florins for which they had been pawned; but Dantzay, by order of Catherine de’Medici, put a spoke into the arrangement, and they were never redeemed. We all know the history of King James’s adventures, and how the real marriage took place at Agershuus, in Norway. The royal couple then visited Denmark and passed a month in the Castle of Kronborg, where they assisted at the nuptials, 19th April, 1590, of the queen’s elder sister, the Princess Elizabeth, with Henry Duke of Brunswick. Which were the apartments occupied by King James and his bride during his residence no one can say--the interior of the building has been much altered since that period, the stories divided for the occupation of the garrison--but in all probability it was the suite called the apartments of Christian IV., now set apart for his present Majesty. They are not remarkable for their size, but contain fine chimney-pieces, with the cipher of the sovereign, and the doorways are ornamented with marble and richly-carved ebony. Tales are still current in Elsinore of the drinking-bouts held by King James and his brother-in-law, Prince Christian in the halls of Kronborg--how they fell intoxicated under the table, rolled into the ditch, etc.

On the exterior of the castle, called Frederic III.’s battery, under the windows of the upper story, runs a cornice richly ornamented in the style of the earlier part of the Seventeenth Century, in the divisions of which are represented medallion portraits of certain personages of the royal family of Denmark. Among them that of King James himself, with his peaked beard side by side with the full features of his consort Queen Anne: in the divisions of each side are sculptured two Tudor roses, and in the ornamentation of the cornice is constantly introduced the portcullis of the same family. The date of this cornice is unknown; but it was in all probability put up to commemorate the nuptials of the King of Scots with the Princess Anne of Denmark.

Luckily for James was it that the embassy of Lord Willoughby to Kronborg took place some few years before his marriage, and that this Scottish assumption of the English badge came not to the ears of the Virgin Queen. Tudor he was in all right by his ancestress Margaret, in the female line, and nearest heir to the English throne; but Elizabeth, when the succession was mooted, brooked no child’s-play. How she would have stormed had she known it, and sent a fleet perchance to intercept the return of James to his dominions! and the youthful Anne might have found a prison in Fotheringay, and a jailer in that exceedingly unpleasant individual Sir Amyas Paulet. Such are the souvenirs of King James I have met with in the chronicles of Kronborg.