always stuffing, the Princess Emily for not hearing him, the Princess Caroline for being grown fat, the Duke of Cumberland for standing awkwardly, Lord Hervey for not knowing what relation the Prince of Sultzbach was to the Elector Palatine, and then carrying off the Queen to walk and be re-snubbed in the garden.

It was at Kensington that Lady Deloraine, governess to the royal children, had her chair pulled from under her by Princess Emily as she was sitting down to cards, to the vast amusement of the King. Lady Deloraine had her revenge by playing him the same trick in return, but she paid for it by so hurting his dignity that she was forbidden the Court.

Frederic Prince of Wales had lodgings in the Palace, and spent most of his time in finding new ways of annoying his parents. He was always complaining that his expenses at Kensington were so great and his lodgings so damp that he must move to London. The King called him a puppy and a scoundrel, whilst the Queen cursed the hour in which he was born, and said his 'popularity made her vomit.' One of his unamiable tricks was to come late to the chapel and make his wife squeeze into her seat between the Queen and her Majesty's prayer-book.

The King was at the card-table at Kensington one evening, when the news was brought him of his son's death. 'Dead, is he?' said King George. Why, they told me he was better,' and so went on with the game.

At Kensington Palace during the King's absence in Hanover, Queen Caroline with the Princes and Princesses spent her time, and she made it a rule to hold a public Court there every Sunday after service. From this place the Queen and her children often of a summer's evening took their diversion in the royal barge on the Thames, Mr. Hill, the King's barge-master, being ordered to wait daily at Kensington Palace for her Majesty's commands.

The reader of Mr. Thackeray's novels will remember the admirable description of the day when George Warrington went to Kensington to make his bow to King George the Second. To this beloved sovereign Mr. Warrington requested his uncle, an assiduous courtier, to present him; and as Mr. Lambert had to go to Court likewise, and thank his Majesty for his promotion, the two gentlemen made the journey to Kensington together, engaging a hackney coach for the purpose, as my Lord Wrotham's carriage was now wanted by its rightful owner, who had returned

to his house in town. They alighted at Kensington Palace Gate, where the sentries on duty knew and saluted the good General, and hence modestly made their way on foot to the summer residence of the Sovereign. Walking under the portico of the Palace, they entered the gallery which leads to the great black marble staircase (which hath been so richly decorated and painted by Mr. Kent), and then passed through several rooms richly hung with tapestry and adorned with pictures and bustos, until they came to the King's great drawing-room, where that famous “Venus " by Titian is, and amongst other masterpieces the picture of “St. Francis adoring the infant Saviour," performed by Sir Peter Paul Rubens; and here, with the rest of the visitors to the Court, the gentlemen waited until His Majesty issued from his private apartments, where he was in conference with certain personages who were called in the news-paper language of that day His M-j-sty's M-n-st-rs. . . . Whilst they were discoursing-George Warrington the while restraining his laughter with admirable gravity-the door of the King's apartment opened and the pages entered, preceding His Majesty. He was followed by his burly son, His Royal Highness the Duke, a very corpulent prince, with a coat and face of blazing scarlet ; behind them came various gentlemen and officers of State, among whom George at once recognised the famous Mr. Secretary Pitt by his tall stature, his eagle eye and beak, his grave and majestic presence .... The sublime Minister passes solemnly through the crowd; the company ranges itself respectfully round the walls; and His Majesty walks round the circle, his royal son lagging a little behind, and engaging select individuals in conversation for his own part. The monarch is a little, keen, fresh-coloured old man, with very protruding eyes, attired in plain old-fashioned snuff-coloured clothes and brown stockings, his only ornament the blue ribbon of his Order of the Garter. He speaks in a German accent, but with ease, shrewdness, and simplicity, addressing those individuals whom he has a mind to notice, or passing on with a bow.'

In the month of August 1733 Kensington Palace was fitted up with all haste for the marriage of the Princess Royal with the Prince of Orange. The Palace was transferred to the Prince and his suite; the chapel was newly furnished for the wedding, but, owing to the Prince's illness, the ceremony had to be postponed, and later it took place at St. James's. The original chapel of the Georgian days was removed to its present site during the Duchess of Kent's time. It is the existing chapel which is

so charmingly described by the authoress of Old Kensington.' 'The clock began striking eleven slowly from the archway of the old Palace; some dozen people are assembled together in the little Palace Chapel and begin repeating the responses in measured tones. It is a quiet little place. The world rolls beyond it on its many chariot wheels to busier haunts, along the great high roads. . . . They assemble to the sound of the bell, advancing feebly, for the most part skirting the sunny wall, past the sentry at his post and along the outer courtyard of the Palace, where the windows are green and red with geranium-pots, where there is a tranquil glimmer of autumnal sunshine and a crowing of cocks. Then the little congregation turns in at a side door of the Palace, and so through a vestibule comes into the Chapel of which the bell had been tinkling for some week-day service; it stops short, and the service begins quite suddenly as a door opens in the wall, and a preacher, in a white surplice, comes out and begins in a deep voice almost before the last vibration of the bell has died away. . . The great square window admits a silenced light; there are high old-fashioned pews on either side of the place and opposite the communion-table, high up over the heads of the congregation a great square curtained pew, with the royal arms and a curtained gallery.'

After Queen Caroline's death, George the Second spent at Kensington a great part of twenty-three years. It was here that he received news of the landing of the Pretender's son and the rising of '45, and was waited on by the Lord Mayor with loyal addresses.

His death took place in the Palace suddenly on the morning of October 25, 1760. He rose early, and being anxious for the arrival of his German despatches, looked at the weathercock, and inquired of the page who brought him his chocolate what was the direction of the wind. A few minutes later the page was alarmed by a sudden crash, and on entering the room he found the King stretched on the floor. As they laid him on the bed he desired in a faint voice that Princess Amelia should be called, and expired.

The State apartments have not been occupied since 1760, for George the Third never lived in the Palace after he was king; and we pass to the beginning of the present century, when Caroline of Brunswick had rooms in the Palace for a short while, before her husband became King George the Fourth, and excited much gossip by the eccentricities of her behaviour.

The apartments now inhabited by Princess Louise and Lord

Lorne are the same which the Duke of Sussex lived in for many years. Here he formed his famous library ; here he died in 1843. His widow, the Duchess of Inverness, lived on here till her death, thirty years later.

The apartments under the State rooms to the east are those once occupied by the Duke and Duchess of Kent; and, at the north-eastern corner, there is a large room with three windows down to the floor, looking over the Round Pond. A brass plate on the wall bears the inscription : ‘In this room Queen Victoria was born May 24th, 1819. In another room still stand the doll's house and toy stables with which she played nearly eighty years ago.

At Kensington Palace the Queen received the news of her accession on the morning of June 20, 1837. The story has often been told. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley, and the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Conyngham, left Windsor at two in the morning, and reached Kensington Palace at five. They knocked and rang for a considerable time before they could rouse the porter at the gate; they were again kept waiting in the courtyard, then turned into one of the lower rooms, and seemed forgotten by everybody. After long delays and ringings to inquire the cause, the attendant was summoned, who declared that the Princess was in such a sweet sleep that she could not venture to disturb her. Then they said, “We are come on business of State to the Queen, and even her sleep must give way to that.' To prove that she did not keep them waiting, in a few minutes she came into the room in a loose white nightgown and shawl, her nightcap thrown off, and her hair falling upon her shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in her eyes, but perfectly collected and dignified. The last historic scene at Kensington Palace was

on the morning of the 21st, at eleven, when the Queen met her Council in the long, dingy, columned room under the Cupola room.

With the accession of the Queen we must end. Kensington Palace is now grown to be an irregular edifice, patched at by successive owners, until it is a matter of discussion whether any part of Nottingham House remains, though the north-east block is sometimes said to be part of the old house of the Finches. But its Dutch formality is not destroyed, and the building, with all its additions, must ever remain chiefly sacred to the memory of Dutch William, the Whig Revolution, and the glorious principles of 1688.

AN OLD WHIG.

6

WITCHCRAFT.

One of the strangest facts in connection with witchcraft in this country is undoubtedly its relation to puritanical views of religion. Sorcery, of course, was not uncommon in the later middle ages, and from time to time we have the record of its punishment. Heretics like the Waldenses and Albigenses were accused of it, the more readily to stir up popular detestation against them, and multitudes perished at the stake in France and Italy, especially after the Bull of Innocent VIII., in 1481, had been extended by Adrian VI. in 1523 to 'sorcerers' by name, as well as “heretics.' In England, however, witchcraft was neither hunted out nor punished with much severity until close upon the seventeenth century. It is sufficient to compare such statements as that of Bartholomæus de Spina, who reckons that a thousand persons were executed for the crime in one year (1524) in the province of Como, with the fact that when, in Elizabeth's reign, a statute was passed against it, the punishment assigned was nothing more terrible than the pillory. In fact, witchcraft, as distinguished from heresy, has everywhere been the dark shadow of Calvinism ; and Puritanism, reflecting the prejudices of the ignorant, and substituting the Bible in its extreme literalism for the Pope, was carried away by a blind and unreasoning panic to almost inconceivable cruelties. Could anyone have imagined that such a man as Calamy, for instance, would have acted on a commission with Matthew Hopkins, the murderous witchfinder, and that Baxter should have defended his proceedings?

Thus the seventeenth century was the great time for witches both in England and Scotland. Scotland led the way, as was natural, for not only had King James written against witchcraft a book which all good subjects were bound to accept, but he had had a special bout with these servants of the Evil One, some of whom had conspired to raise a tempest and nearly caused the King's shipwreck when he sailed to Denmark for his bride. Moreover, James had been highly, flattered by an artful compliment paid him, Satan having acknowledged, through one of the possessed, that the King was the enemy of whom he stood in most

His Majesty, therefore, was pleased to take a personal

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