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then, the Parliament had always expired with the Sovereign. A paper had indeed been circulated, in which the logic of a small sharp pettifogger was employed to prove that writs, issued in the joint names of William and Mary, ceased to be of force as soon as William reigned alone. But this paltry cavil had comBut this paltry cavil had com-fault fug pletely failed. It had not even been mentioned in the Lower House, and had been mentioned in the Upper only to be contemptuously overruled. The whole Magistracy of the City swelled the procession. The banners of England and France, Scotland and Ireland, were carried by great nobles before the corpse. The pall was borne by the chiefs of the illustrious houses of Howard, Seymour, Grey, and Stanley. On the gorgeous coffin of purple and gold were laid the crown and sceptre of the realm. The day was well suited to such a ceremony. The sky was dark and troubled; and a few ghastly flakes of snow fell on the black plumes of the funeral car. Within the Abbey, nave, choir and transept were in a blaze a

V

with innumerable waxlights. The body was deposited under ata

sumptuous canopy in the centre of the church while the Primate preached. The earlier part of his discourse was deformed by pedantic divisions and subdivisions: but towards the close he told what he had himself seen and heard with a simplicity and earnestness more affecting than the most skilful rhetoric. Through the whole ceremony the distant booming of cannon was heard every minute from the batteries of the Tower. The gentle Queen sleeps among her illustrious kindred in the southern aisle of the Chapel of Henry the Seventh.

The affection with which her husband cherished her memory was soon attested by a monument the most superb that was ever erected to any sovereign. No scheme had been so much her own, none had been so near her heart, as that of converting the palace of Greenwich into a retreat for seamen. It had occurred to her when she had found it difficult to provide good shelter and good attendance for the thousands of brave men who had come back to England wounded after the battle of La Hogue. While she lived scarcely any step was taken towards the accomplishing of her favourite design.

But

it should seem that, as soon as her husband had lost her, he

began to reproach himself for having neglected her wishes.

A celebral No time was lost. A plan was furnished by Wren; and soon archietan edifice, surpassing that asylum which the magnificent Lewis

had provided for his soldiers, rose on the margin of the Thames. Whoever reads the inscription which runs round the frieze of the hall will observe that William claims no part of the merit of the design, and that the praise is ascribed to Mary alone. Had the King's life been prolonged till the works were completed, a statue of her who was the real foundress of the institution would have had a conspicuous place in that court which presents two lofty domes and two graceful colonnades to the multitudes who are perpetually passing up and down the imperial river. But that part of the plan was never carried into effect; and few of those who now gaze on the noblest of European hospitals are aware that it is a memorial of the virtues of the good Queen Mary, of the love and sorrow of William, and of the great victory of La Hogue.

FIRE AT WHITEHALL AND VISIT OF PETER
THE GREAT TO ENGLAND. 1698.

(History of England, Chapter XXIII.)

DURING the long and busy session which had just closed, some interesting and important events had taken place which may properly be mentioned here. One of those events was the destruction of the most celebrated palace in which the sovereigns of England have ever dwelt. On the evening of the 4th of January, a woman-the patriotic journalists and pamphleteers of that time did not fail to note that she was a Dutch woman,—who was employed as a laundress at Whitehall, lighted a charcoal fire in her room and placed some linen round it. The linen caught fire and burned furiously. The tapestry, the bedding, the wainscots were soon in a blaze. The unhappy

At ilu siège /) Nasusin It 95 culls an rang ligh viss somuch at his ease with bother fing hovel battery that hi Fire at Whitehall. Serve i solder mell it Salamander.

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woman who had done the mischief perished. Soon the flames
burst out of the windows. All Westminister, all the Strand, all
the river were in commotion. Before midnight the King's
apartments, the Queen's apartments, the Wardrobe, the Trea-
sury, the office of the Privy Council, the office of the Secretary
of State, had been destroyed. The two chapels perished
together: that ancient chapel where Wolsey had heard mass in
the midst of gorgeous copes, golden candlesticks, and jewelled
crosses, and that modern edifice which had been erected for
the devotions of James, and had been embellished by the
pencil of Verrio and the chisel of Gibbons. Meanwhile a great
extent of building had been blown up; and it was hoped that
by this expedient a stop had been put to the conflagration.
But early in the morning a new fire broke out of the heaps of
combustible matter which the gunpowder had scattered to right
and left. The guard room was consumed. No trace was left
of that celebrated gallery which had witnessed so many balls
and pageants, in which so many maids of honour had listened
too easily to the vows and flatteries of gallants, and in which so
many bags of gold had changed masters at the hazard table.
During some time men despaired of the Banqueting House.
The flames broke in on the south of that beautiful hall, and

were with great difficulty extinguished by the exertions of the thilf

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guards, to whom Cutts, mindful of his honourable nickname of
the Salamander, set as good an example on this night of terror an
as he had set in the breach at Namur. Many lives were lost,
and many grievous wounds were inflicted by the falling masses
of stone and timber, before the fire was effectually subdued.
When day broke, the heaps of smoking ruins spread from
Scotland Yard to the Bowling Green, where the mansion of the
Duke of Buccleuch now stands. The Banqueting House was
safe; but the graceful columns and festoons designed by Inigo
were so much defaced and blackened that their form could
hardly be discerned. There had been time to move the most
valuable effects which were moveable. Unfortunately some of
Holbein's finest pictures were painted on the walls, and are
consequently known to us only by copies and engravings.

1

The books of the Treasury and of the Privy Council were rescued, and are still preserved. The Ministers whose offices had been burned down were provided with new offices in the neighbourhood. Henry the Eighth had built, close to St. James' Park, two appendages to the Palace of Whitehall, a cockpit and a tennis court. The Treasury now occupies the site of the cockpit, the Privy Council Office the site of the tennis court.

Notwithstanding the many associations which make the name of Whitehall still interesting to an Englishman, the old building was little regretted. It was spacious indeed and commodious, but mean and inelegant. The people of the capital had been annoyed by the scoffing way in which foreigners spoke of the principal residence of our sovereigns, and often said that it was a pity that the great fire had not spared the old portico of St. Paul's and the stately arcades of Gresham's Bourse, and taken in exchange that ugly old labyrinth of dingy brick and plastered timber. It might now be hoped that we should have a Louvre. Before the ashes of the old Palace were cold, plans for a new palace were circulated and discussed. But William, who could not draw his breath in the air of Westminster, was little disposed to expend a million on a house which it would have been impossible for him to inhabit. Many blamed him for not restoring the dwelling of his predecessors; and a few Jacobites, whom evil temper and repeated disappointments had driven almost mad, accused him of having burned it down. It was not till long after his death that Tory writers ceased to call for the rebuilding of Whitehall, and to complain that the King of England had no better town house than St. James's, while the delightful spot where the Tudors and the Stuarts had held their councils and their revels was covered with the mansions of his jobbing courtiers.

In the same week in which Whitehall perished, the Londoners were supplied with a new topic of conversation by a royal visit, which, of all royal visits, was the least pompous and ceremonious and yet the most interesting and important. On the 10th of January a vessel from Holland anchored off Green

wich and was welcomed with great respect. Peter the First, Czar of Muscovy, was on board. He took boat with a few at tendants and was rowed up the Thames to Norfolk Street, where a house overlooking the river had been prepared for his reception.

His journey is an epoch in the history, not only of his own country but of ours, and of the world. To the polished nations of Western Europe, the empire which he governed had till then been what Bokhara or Siam is to us. That Empire indeed, though less extensive than at present, was the most extensive that had ever obeyed a single chief. The dominions of Alexander and of Trajan were small when compared with the immense area of the Scythian desert. But in the estimation of statesmen that boundless expanse of larch forest and morass, where the snow lay deep during eight months of every year, and where a wretched peasantry could with difficulty defend their hovels against troops of famished wolves, was of less account than the two or three square miles into which were crowded the counting houses, the warehouses, and the innumerable masts of Amsterdam. On the Baltic Russia had not then a single port. Her maritime trade with the other nations of Christendom was entirely carried on at Archangel, a place which had been created and was supported by adventurers from our island. In the days of the Tudors, a ship from England, seeking a north east passage to the land of silk and spice, had discovered the White Sea. The barbarians who dwelt on the shores of that dreary gulf had never before seen such a portent as a vessel of a hundred and sixty tons burden. They fled in terror; and, when they were pursued and overtaken, prostrated themselves before the chief of the strangers and kissed his feet. He succeeded in opening a friendly communication with them; and from that time there had been a regular commercial intercourse between our country and the subjects of the Czar. A Russia Company was incorporated in London. An English factory was built at Archangel. The factory was indeed, even at the latter part of the seventeenth century, a rude and mean building. The walls consisted of trees laid one upon another;