The Portfolio. (Seeley and Co.)—The subject for April is "Whitehall
; " and Mr. W. J. Loftie has collected a mass of interesting facts and historical details about the Palace, or rather Palaces, of Whitehall. It is difficult indeed to preserve any clear idea of the dimensions and order of the many residences that have crowded out each other during hundreds of years on the area occupied by Whitehall. The Whitehall that interests most of us, however, is the Whitehall of the Stuart Kings. The magni- ficent coneeption which Inigo Jones planned for James, had it been materialised, would have given us a Royal Palace comparable in size to any in existence. But it would have ruined any monarch but a Crcesus and the Stuarts were not allowed to leave even a palace behind them. The Banqueting Hall is but a small part of the Great Palace; that exists only on paper. The plans and portions of architectural detail which illustrate Mr. Loftie's article are most interesting, and convey to the student Inigo Jones's great mastery of the Palladian style. The average reader will doubtless feel more drawn to the description of the Whitehall of Charles I., and the numerous details of social and court life which Mr. Loftie has written into the story of the building, a description extending to the Restoration, which saw an almost continuous revel till the day that the Merry Monarch died. Mr. Loftie does not marshal his facts in the clearest possible manner, and the effort to keep architectural and historical narrative abreast, is apt to confuse one. We have, however, a picturesque description of Whitehall and its builders, containing some striking details of the lives of its occupants.
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