whom England has produced—and we know, with the minutest detail, the extent of his plans.
In the office of Her Majesty's Board of Works, and in the Library of All Souls' College at Oxford, are preserved probably the whole of the drawings and memoranda that Wren made for his work at Hampton Court. From these, if not from the somewhat precarious evidence of Defoe, we learn what was the intention of the King and his architect. "I have been assured," Defoe writes in his "Journey from London to the Land's End" (1724), "that had the peace continued, and the King lived to enjoy the continuance of it, His Majesty had resolved to have pulled down all the remains of the old building (such as the chapel and the large court within the first gate), and to have built up the whole Palace after the manner of those two fronts already done. In these would have been an entire set of rooms for the receiving, and, if need had been, lodging and entertaining any foreign prince, with his retinue; also offices for all the Secretaries of State, Lords of the Treasury and of Trade, to have repaired to for the despatch of such business as it might be necessary to have done there upon the King's longer residence there than ordinary; as also apartments for all the great officers of the household; so that had the house had two great squares added, as was designed, there would have been no room to spare, or that would not have been very well filled."
Another Versailles it would have been, so far as William could make it; and the parks and gardens
