there a garden that Henry VIII. may have planned just as it now lies, have appealed with a new force as I saw how they had been, or could be, the subjects of the artist's most delicate draughtsmanship. With the kind help of the Chaplain of the Palace, I have penetrated to many a place which I had never seen before. Each hour the impression has deepened, and at last I have sat down to put together a few memorials of some happy vacation days.
This book has no ambitious claim. It attempts only to say, in a series of sketches not always closely connected with each other, something about what the writer has enjoyed and what he has learnt.
To wander about the gardens, to study the architecture and the pictures, with the records of the great men of past ages who planned and built and lived there, is the first and best way to know Hampton Court and its history. The stately Palace has had its historian. It is not too much to say that our pleasure in and our knowledge of Hampton Court is increased tenfold by the work of Mr. Ernest Law. At every step he has been before us. There is not a source of information which he has not studied, there is no memory which he has not appreciated and preserved. The recognition which Her Majesty the Queen has bestowed upon his labours of love, the most graceful and appropriate that could be found, is the fit expression of the gratitude which Her Majesty's subjects feel to him who has done so much to enhance the pleasure with which the public receives
