shows how minutely he had entered into the internal as well as the external arrangements. He states the stone required for the stairs, the "iron rayles of good worke," while the wainscoting, and even the sewers and the smoking-room to the Guard-chamber are considered.
From 1689 to 1718, it may be said that Wren was more or less actively concerned with building and with supervision of Hampton. In that last year, when he was eighty-five, he was dismissed from the post of Surveyor-General of the Works. Still with his mind unclouded, with a character which resisted all attempts to belie it, he passed his last year "principally in the consolation of the Holy Scriptures, cheerful in solitude, and as well pleased to die in the shade as in the light."
Wren's work at Hampton Court is the best memorial of his power as a domestic architect. It suffers to some extent from cramped surroundings, and from his design never having been completed. It is probable, too, indeed certain, that in some instances he altered his plans by the direct orders of William and Mary. But still, with its faults and incompleteness, it is the greatest example of the adaptation of the Louis Quatorze style in England, and it is a monument worthy of a great man. With Wren's life and with the accession of the House of Hanover there passed away the chance of creating a great English palace such as our sovereigns, unlike the great Continental monarchs, have never possessed. The
