CURRENT LITERATURE.
A Short History of Hampton Court. By Ernest Law, B.A. (George Bell and Co. 7s. 6d. net.)—Although Mr. Law avowedly publishes this volume as a mere résumé of his greater work on the same subject, he contrives in it to show his readers a number of dazzling historical dissolving views. Beginning with the magnificent figure of Henry VIII.'s great Cardinal, he unrolls a procession of personages which reminds us of nothing so much. as of Banquo's issue,—the line of Kings shown Macbeth by the weird sisters. First, the fair Anne Boleyn, by her witcheries and beauty undermining the power of the haughty builder of the Palace, and, in her turn, slain by a glance from Jane Seymour's downcast eyes. On through the brief reign of Edward VI. to the day of the sour-faced Philip and his plain bride, who spent their honeymoon here, and disgusted the whole English people by the amount of emigre which appeared in their menu. Then we come to Elizabeth, "walking with a certain grandity rather than gravity," a noun which not ineptly describes the Virgin Queen. James I. held many festivities in the old Tudor Palace, while his Queen died there. In the troubled days of Charles we have a confused picture of the King flying through a dark November evening across the river, and so by horse towards Southampton. Afterwards, plans of selling the Palace were freely mooted by the Parliament. But Cromwell interfered, and as his Highness the Protector, took up his abode there, for "thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges." After the Restoration, each King in turn seems to havo lived in the Palace, down to the time when the irascible George II. boxed the ears of his grandson there. The pain must have been severe, for George III. could never bear to live at Hampton Court; and from that box of the ears dates the downfall of it as a Palace. All this history is shortly, yet picturesquely, set forth by Mr. Law ; and the book which results is most interesting and entertaining.
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