Chapter 37 - Page 2

retired covered walks, and interior fountains, like
those of the Alhambra, was a perfect bower of roses, jasmine, and
clematis. Every sense, sight and smell particularly, was gratified, and
the reception-rooms formed a very charming framework for the pictures of
love which Charles II. unrolled among the voluptuous paintings of Titian,
of Pordenone and of Van Dyck; the same Charles whose father's portrait –
the martyr king - was hanging in his gallery, and who could show upon the
wainscots of the various apartments the holes made by the balls of the
puritanical followers of Cromwell, when on the 24th of August, 1648, at
the time they had brought Charles I. prisoner to Hampton Court. There it
was that the king, intoxicated with pleasure and adventure, held his
court - he, who, a poet in feeling, thought himself justified in
redeeming, by a whole day of voluptuousness, every minute which had been
formerly passed in anguish and misery. It was not the soft green sward
of Hampton Court - so soft that it almost resembled the richest velvet in
the thickness of its texture - nor was it the beds of flowers, with their
variegated hues which encircled the foot of every tree with rose-trees
many feet in height, embracing most lovingly their trunks - nor even the
enormous lime-trees, whose branches swept the earth like willows,
offering a ready concealment for love or reflection beneath the shade of
their foliage - it was none of these things for which Charles II. loved
his palace of Hampton Court. Perhaps it might have been that beautiful
sheet of water, which the cool breeze rippled like the wavy undulations
of Cleopatra's hair, waters bedecked with cresses and white water-lilies,
whose chaste bulbs coyly unfolding themselves beneath the sun's warm
rays, reveal the golden gems which lie concealed within their milky
petals - murmuring waters, on the bosom of which black swans majestically
floated, and the graceful water-fowl, with their tender broods covered
with silken down, darted restlessly in every direction, in pursuit of the
insects among the reeds, or the fogs in their mossy retreats. Perhaps it
might have been the enormous hollies, with their dark and tender green
foliage; or the bridges uniting the banks of the canals in their embrace;
or the fawns browsing in the endless avenues of the park; or the
innumerable birds that hopped about the gardens, or flew from branch to
branch, amidst the emerald foliage.

It might well have been any of these charms - for Hampton Court had them
all; and possessed, too, almost forests of white roses, which climbed and
trailed along the lofty trellises, showering down upon the ground their
snowy leaves rich with soft perfumery. But no, what Charles II. most
loved in Hampton