brown leaves stir with faint rustle. Suddenly the bell of the palace clock peals once-its silvery tones passing away with the awakened breeze into the far-off blue. . . . And so the dream breaks. The old bridge is gone; gone, too, are "the old familiar faces," and the voices of other days; and stronger still for that shadow of a dream is marked the dividing-line betwixt past and present. The modern bridge is lower down, in a position convenient for the public, and for the park-gate, which occupies now a somewhat gloomy corner, and is left unlocked all day. Tradition holds that nothing lost in Home Park is ever again found. Yet could an X ray of rarer powers be discovered, revealing things hidden in the ground, it might be that a child's small treasure might come to light somewhere about here. Just one hundred and one years ago an old maiden lady, a family friend of the famous Dr. Bentley, died. She bequeathed to a descendant of his, "Lady A.'s" little daughter of seven, her whole hoard of precious things. There were jewelled étuis, enamelled watches set with diamonds, and many a thing such as folks in these days go wild over; and there were besides a number of beautiful little finger-rings, all strung on a bit of pack-thread. One day the lawyer in charge of the bequest journeyed down from London to Hampton Court to deliver it over. The little girl was by ill chance allowed to keep possession of the rings herself; and one by one soon nearly the whole of them disappeared in the long grass where the children played, and were never seen any more. The ghost of Sir Christopher Wren, if ever he revisits scenes that were ennobled by his architecture, must not seldom have to turn away grieved and disappointed. It is easy to imagine how he would shroud his face to shut out the eyesore of surrounding erections as in London,-or as here and elsewhere the desecration of some of his most choice interiors. The pillared Garden Cloister of Hampton Court was no doubt designed as a fitting entrance or exit for the court to pass through. to and from the gardens. And thus, unaltered, it remained up to so late as the 'sixties, or perhaps much later. Then, when the palace grew to be more and more "a People's Palace," this spacious stately vestibule became a receptacle for the storing of garden chairs, piled up to the very ceiling almost. Shop counters were placed there, and photographs sold. Through and through every summer's day swarm the loudvoiced crowds, to whom, if indeed perchance they know it, the name of Wren is as nought. The sense of quiet and good taste which belonged to the days of old, when everything was more or less in keeping as it were, is forgotten. The inner semi-circular alcove leading from the Fountain Court to the Garden Cloister is built with arched recesses, or niches in the wall, which might have been intended for statues. There were no statues, but in one recess sat a poor old woman who sold fruit. Two big market baskets on the pavement at her knee were heaped with fruits according to their season. In June and July long narrow strawberry pottles, the same as painted in Sir Joshua's "Strawberry Girl." Later came punnets of greengages and plums and apricots. Especially fresh to memory are the old fruit-woman's plums. They were always a kind of red, unripe color, and about as hard as the stone plum with which Miss Edgeworth makes her parents worry poor Rosamond of "The Purple Jar!" None the less, however, were they to us supreme as objects of desire. The old woman entrenched behind her baskets ceased one summer, and her image faded. Out of mind also, it may be, is now the far distant time when the water in the Fountain Court and also in the gardens uprose in one high jette d'eau. The strong. firm stream simply sprang into the air and fell with a certain indescribable rippling splash, which comes back forever at will to the ear of those who knew it. The full flow of the fountain then had not been frittered into flattened prettiness, which seems to so ill accord with Fuseli's grave and fast-decaying medallions of the Labors of Hercules, A sudden shadow darkening the carpet gave the signal for immediate flight from the room, whoever might be there at the moment. The shadow was a huge black spider, named by common consent after Hampton Court's renowned cardinal. The creature's size was abnormal-his stretch of leg prodigious. And his wife was certain to come after him, as though to enhance the horror! frescoed in grisaille round the cloistered lessly entered a room from nowhere! square.1 Equally out of keeping with the grand lines of the garden is the same low flattened form of the present day, carried out in the central fountain there. Far-famed for its crystal purity was the drinking water of Hampton Court. It was conveyed in pipes from the hill of Coombe Wood, a distance of perhaps three miles. Fevered sufferers in the neighborhood, lying sick and parched with thirst, have been known to pine for a draught of this pure water. Leaving the Fountain Court, one might wander under dark cloisters and thread the windings of dim passages, or come upon narrow doorways and glimpses unawares of little paved courts or crowded-up old bits of garden-ins and outs where sometimes it was hard to find the way. . . . Of less ancient date, in cool and gracious contrast to the socalled Dark Cloisters, are ranged the white pillars of the White Colonnade. Doors lead from it into apartments whose charm was their access to the Private Gardens, now in these days almost the loveliest and most delightful part within all the palace limits. The Bower Walk and the terraces and green alleys are still full of quiet beauty; although, for the inmates, it may be, their charm scarcely equals what it was when there was an entrance fee of one shilling for strangers! And here it may be noted that in former days the palace had no ghost-haunted corners; visitants from another world were then unheard of. They might have been there, but no one spoke of them. Perhaps people believed them less-perhaps they were more afraid. Many things now are talked about or printed which then were scarcely breathed. The sole apparition ever known to cause a shudder or a shriek was "Cardinal Wolsey" when, followed by his wife, he noise 1 Since naming "Fuseli as having frescoed the grey medallions, I have seen a copy of Mr. Law's Guide to Hampton Court, where Laguerre is named as the artist. I have no doubt of this being correct, but I prefer to leave it as it is the name of Fuseli, the error being one that is bound up with my own old impressions of the Fountain Court. Within the oldest of the old brick walls there is a garden court, about which nothing remarkable is known excepting the story of two acacia trees which once grew therein. Both were planted on the same day as very young saplings by two sisters who lived together for a great many years in the rooms belonging to this plot of garden. The trees (I knew them well) increased in size and flourished for years with the usual negligent grace of an acacia. Then the elder sister died, and her acacia, immediately after her funeral had gone past it, drooped and withered away. Years passed on, and then at last the other died, having reached a ripe old age. On the very day of her death the surviving tree-the one planted by herself-began to fail, and then it also perished. There existed surely some strange sympathy between the four separate lives, and the same mysterious thread of destiny seems to have bound the old sisters in their age with the pair of trees in the green vigor of their prime. One other tree I remember in its beauty. It was a great catalpa, which, in a sheltered eastern angle of the palace, overhung the garden wall (then guiltless of a public drinking water-tap!), and made the shade beautiful with its thousands of purple-throated blooms. From old age, or from the effects of climate, this fine old tree has long since disappeared, and it would be hard to find another of such grand growth in any place in this country nowadays. Time wanes, and we must bid farewell to these old beloved precincts. Few, doubtless, are those who will have cared to follow even thus far a lead so trifling, and one that takes us back half then, does not restrain any member a hundred years! Little use is it to prose any longer of how wide the contrast-how different the then and now; of how the once prevailing atmosphere of repose and quiet is forever gone. Yet, not even for the joy of beholding Hampton Court once more as it was in the glory of its prime, as it remained, unspoilt and regal, before Bank Holidays began; before the iron horse had outrun the old-fashioned cockney vans from London; even for a pleasure like this, who is there who would have the former years return, with their oppressions and injustice unredressed, their cruelties not wiped out, their unerased blots on humanity still staining the fair page of English life? The old, unhappy things have mercifully vanished; they are gone beyond recall. And if with them much that was beautiful is swept away, we must not lament too deeply, nor deem the price too high, though the obtuseness of modern taste and feeling may often have worked ill, or often ruin, with many a spot dear to the heart of some, as memory itself. LEANOR VERE BOYLE. From The Contemporary Review. RELIGION AND ART.1 In assuming the position of adviser to the leaders of our national Church on a matter of vital interest to both Religion and Art, I feel called upon to avow that it is by the amplitude of its ægis alone that I can presume to regard myself as welcomed within its special folds. Clerics of authority have assured me, that certain independence of thought, which has caused me habitually to look behind the teach ing of the visible Church, to the full meaning of the word which framed the invisible Church, does not debar me from communion with our Anglican Church, into which I was received at my birth, and which has since become that of my choice. This communion, 1 A paper read at the Church Congress. from a sentiment of reverence for other congregations of Christians, neither does it forbid a feeling of fellowship with any other communities that call upon the God of Abraham as their God. A visible representation of the truth, in the form of a governing body, with a profession of faith, is a necessity for every group of worshippers, and the Church of England was formed, with great wisdom, to supply this urgent want. Its history, in the main, has justified its claim to be catholic; the influence it has exercised in its ministrations and services, the excellence of its literature from the times of Hooker and Jeremy Taylor to our own day, and the examples of blameless life set by its clergy, have won the respect and admiration of the world. I am not behind any in a feeling of reverence. The Church Congress testifies to the fearlessness of its desire for greater perfection and to the sincerity of its aim to increase the fitness of our national Church for its high office. It invites open discussion of future possibilities. I think all Englishmen with truth-seeking minds should respond, and I offer my special convictions, having the strongest sense of the high purpose of art, with no fear that the Church will regard my course with displeasure, although I have to complain that with respect to art it has from the beginning held a most discouraging position. There are members of our Church who look on its career as predestined by fixed principles admitting of no de velopment. These are apt to seek refuge from blame in pleading that in the discouragement of art it resembles the primitive Christian Church. The first community of preachers, however, betrayed no inclination to oppose art; the new believers only concurred in the destiny which condemned the decadent system of society, whose religion and morals had ceased to exercise any restraining force over the people; and art, with other beautiful things, disappeared without the Church's opposition, and spite of Christianity. indeed, in It is fortunate that the task has thus been left to our day, with a largeminded diocesan, and an artist having a profounder understanding of decorative requirements than any artist of the last century had, and possessing the genius and knowledge to apply them. The new faith indeed was friendly to art-the decorations with religious significance, and the illustrations of Scriptural events on the walls of the catacombs, together with the designs on Christian sarcophagi now preserved in the Lateran, prove the large-minded Primitive man was not the first ardisposition of the first disciples-Jews tist. The work of creation, examined though they were by birth-to use by the chemist, is a marvel for its graphic and engraved inventions to chemistry; by the metallurgist it is convey the full meaning of their be- worshipped for its metals; by the botlief, which was dearer to them than anist for the supreme perfection of its life. flora; by the anatomist for the masterly provision for the life of different orders. Each recognizes the supreme summit of his own ascending knowledge in the particular creation he examines. When the artist looks at the beauty which crowns every fresh line of effort in nature, he recognizes the master artist's work, and who gives greater praise than the student of design? All his endeavors are both prayers and thanksgivings. By his interpretations of unconsidered beauties, he teaches others to see how every order of creation progressed upwards from the roughest forms to supreme gracefulness, for when the problem of originating a new genus of life had been attained, it was often without beauty, often even a mere lump; then the heavenly artistic mind began to work out its developments; it fashioned these by slow steps into exquisite shapes; it decorated the surfaces with spots, and with delightful devices and colors, entertaining and charming first the fastidious eye of the creature's fellows-the primary purpose, as naturalists declare-and then that of far higher intelligences also to the end of time. the It The art in question carried too clearly the signet seal of humanity for Christians to reject it. Man has been called the first tool-making animal. He is more appropriately entitled the inventor of imitative outline. The highest quadramana use stones and stocks of trees as tools. It was reserved for man to make known to posterity his presence upon the earth by leaving wonderful drawings of his most admired brutes, the deer, horse, the mammoth, and others. should be noted that in doing this he was anticipating the more complicated designs by which his representatives in later days gained the epithet "divine." The term was applied to Michael Angelo and Raffaelle, provoking some censure, but the epithet was not an unconsidered one; doubtless the intention was to imply that they worked in envy of the "sons of God," who said, "Let us make man in our own image." I must say more to claim the fullest consideration for the sacredness of art, because, undoubtedly, there is still the survival of a tacit prejudice against it; it is scarcely an outspoken one any longer; yet it is only in recent years, in our country, that the open condemnation of painting and sculpture, in the name of religion, has ceased. The Bishop of London, in 1774, refused the offer of Sir Joshua Reynolds and James Barry to give their services gratuitously for the painting of St. Paul's, adding that "never during his lifetime should the cathedral be so desecrated." Perhaps we should complete this justification of art by correcting certain judgments supposed to be founded on historic example. It is often assumed that the Jews from the beginning denounced art; but this was not so. The twelve tribes in obedience to the command of Moses emblazoned their standards with the forms of animals; in the Temple Holy of Holies, were placed two cherubim carved in olive wood, and there were numerous other angels sculptured on the walls of the house; under the brazen sea were twelve oxen cast in bronze, and sculptured lions formed part of the ornamentation; so that there is no ground for the assumption that the second commandment was intended to forbid artistic work. Hezekiah, it is true, destroyed the brazen serpent, and other image work in the temple, and doubt less, although he acted without any command but that of uninspired common sense, the danger from the idolatry of objects of terror was too real to leave any question of its wisdom. He had to destroy devil worship, the worst form of idolatry; a valuable relic of past history had become a fatal danger. This act of the Jewish king was like that of a captain in a storm who throws a cargo of corn overboard to save his ship, and to assume that corn was henceforth to be eschewed would be no more foolish than to argue that the imitation of animal form for all future time would be an impiety. Nevertheless this act has been far-reaching as an example. It caused the Jews afterwards to hate all art as a snare of Satan, and it led the Mohammedans to abjure it altogether. All wisdom dictates caution against the falsehood of extremes; it counsels a firm judgment when avoiding Charybdis to escape Scylla. There are idols which the sternest iconoclasts worship. Our Lord, in all the words recorded, does not waste one on material idolatry. He did not slay dead dragons, but he denounced in the strongest terms the spiritual idolatry which had grown up in the place of that which Hezekiah had destroyed root and branch. He would have no tampering with the superstition of the heathen however much it was welded on to Judaism, when it taught that the justice of the offended God could be escaped by recourse to some deceitful counter power. Neither would he sanction a form of charmful words as, "it is a gift," to avert the penalty of disobedience, nor would he extenuate reliance on the letter instead of the spirit of the law, nor increase the burdens of the heavy laden by tolerating the proscriptions made in the name of "the hedge about the law." He brought forward the merciful and the just meaning of "the beginning,”—the original ideal-against the authority of the greatest and most revered Rabban Hillel. Thus he would not excuse divorce for any cause but sin-and he would not have men escape an oath by the plea that it had not been on the gold of the Temple, for all such acts were spiritual idolatry. On the other hand he instilled a love of beauty of nature in the minds of his followers so that they were better prepared than other Jews would have been to recognize what was still innocent in the taste for art of the Gentiles. Their immediate use of it was to proclaim the victory over death. The examples left were for the most part rude and hurried, but they are of eternal value as witness of the conversion of a dying society. Some of the works done at this epoch, studiously and deliberately for the luxurious, testify to the shamelessness which condemned the reigning power to decay and death. Originally art was the mark of the difference between man and the brute, it had become a sign that man was using his cunning to descend below the brute, and God, who will have no falling away from onward purpose, left the people and all their activity desolate. The Church of Christ was not ready to foster a new art. It had to keep its life and faith amid the struggles of rival barbarous hordes of Goths, Vandals, and Huns, and before long the inroads of the followers of the Arab Prophet, all hostile for the time to the formation of a new civilization; for the invaders met like the waves of a tornado, and marked their courses by the unburied dead, making it doubtful whether order or rule could ever come again. When the Church had left its first love (in centres where, as in Constantinople, sacred representations had to be made), its productions sank ever lower in artistic ability, until they came to a griffinish grotesqueness, so |