THE PRIVATE PALACES OF LONDON.
The Private Palaces of London. By E. Beresford Chancellor, MA. (Kagan Paul, Trench, and Co. £1 Is. net.)—The "private palaces" are of two dames, those which have been and those which are. The first class is lamentably numerous. More than a quarter of this volume is devoted to them, and the list is very long. In the first chapter we road about the "palaces" that have been in the City and are not, There was Devonshire House in what is now Devonshire Square, built about 1560, and used as a dwelling-house in the Commonwealth time. When it was demolished we do not know. Northampton House—built after the Restoration and burnt in 1687, with the tragical result that two of the Earl's children perished—Aylesbury and Albemarle Houses were all in Clerkenwell, new not at all palace-like. There were others too numerous to mention. Mr. Chancellor has something to say about Crosby Place. Surely provision ought to have been made long ago that such acts of vandalism should not be perpe- trated, To trust at the last moment to private benevolence is folly indeed. We see nothing about a famous house which, in a way, left a survivor, tho palace of the De In Poles, part of which the Merchant Taylors' Company bought for their school in 1559. As we move westward we pass the site of many great houses which have left only their names. Some of them are well within the memory of living men, Northumberland House, for instance, the disappearance of which Mr. Chancellor reasonably regrets, and Montagu House, which at least has a splendid successor in the British Museum. Then there are the palaces which were "private" and are now publics. Marlborough House is now Royal, and several abodes of nobles in the past have been absorbed in Government buildings. And then we have a goodly list of the "private palaces" of the present. They are, not equal, externally, to those that may be seen in European capitals.; but as to the treasures, artistic and other, which they contain there is nothing to match them in the world. Mr. Chancellor describes them and their contents, and illustrates his description liberally with reproductions of famous pictures and other notable things. The book is worthy of its great subject.
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