76 “Notes of the Month on [Jan. 
is avery good actress, not a very bad singer, wears remarkably well, 
and is extremely dangerous to quarrel with. 
Of all monarchs, our excellent King is certainly the most unlucky in 
his places of residence. With five er six palaces, he has not at this 
moment one in which he can hide his head. St. James’s, once a solid, 
comfortable, old mansion, in which his royal father contrived to pass 
many a pleasant day, and give his loving subjects many a pleasant enter- 
tainment, is one half ruin, and the other half turned into a cold suite of 
heavy halls, where eternal solitude and silence reign, rooms fit for 
nothing but laying illustrious bodies in state, or the only less dreary ° 
ceremonial of a yearly levee. 
Buckingham House, once like its neighbour, a good old comfortable 
mansion, where the old king spent many a pleasant day, too, and lived 
among his lords and ladies, is down to the ground, and superseded by 
the very worst building of the kind on the habitable globe. But even 
this fine affair has not a spot in which anybody can eat, drink, or sleep ; 
and half a generation may pass away before it will be pulled down: 
again. As to being either handsome or healthy, the question has been 
perfectly settled ; and we hope that, while his Majesty can have a bed 
at the Hummums for five shillings a night, he will not be careless 
enough of his rheumatism, or of his character as a man of taste, ever to 
take a bed in the Nash palace. 
Kew Palace, at no time a great favourite of ours, but still capable of 
being dwelt in; and convenient for a royal residence by its vicinity to’ 
ministers (who regularly lose a whole day by a journey to Windsor), is’ 
now the palace of the “ Winter wild,” and we question whether a bat 
or an owl that has any notions of comfort, would think of roosting there. 
Kew is a ruin; and, though Lord Sidmouth, and others of those old’ 
gentlemen, who have been long attached to living tax free, may cast a 
longing eye to lodgings under its roof, we, as loyal : subjects, must caution | 
the } privy council ‘against sanctioning any royal attempt of the kind. . % 
Windsor Castle is, up to this hour, what it has been these six years, - 
a mass of dust, mortar, Roman cement, and Irish bricklayers. Even the 
appendix to Mr. Wyatt’s name has not wrought the miracle of giving 
his Majesty one closet in which he may drink a cup of coffee in’ secu- 
rity. Upholsterers, smiths, carvers and gilders s, usurp the regal tene-~ 
ment, and the halls of the illustrious progenitors of the Brunswicks, are 
still frightened from their propriety, by the dragging of carts, the 
pushing of wheel-barrows, the clank of hammers, and the dialect of Con- 
nemara. Whether we should impeach the architect of the voluminous 
name, or lament the severity of that fate, which for ever prohibits the 
richest king of the richest kingdom, from having a spot to call his own, 
we may pledge ourselves that there has not been a more houseless sove- 
reign since the day when William the Conqueror slept under canvass, 
on the shingle of Pevensey. ; 
They are now making the additional experiment of lighting the Castle 
with gas; in the lucky moment, too, when every body else is turning” 
it out of his house as fast as he can. Let justice be done to gas as much 
as to the Lord Mayor. Both are excellent in their proper place, and 
quite the contrary in every other. Gas in our roads, where, if it blow. 
up, it can blow up only a watchman ; gas in our streets, in our shop- 
