Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/257

Rh they had ever read her favourite sermon by Dr. Tillotson on evil speaking.

More marked still might have been the contrast of society under William and Mary had not the new King's health suffered severely from his brief sojourn at Whitehall Court. The air of Westminster, the thick fogs, the river floods, which in spring washed the courts of his palace, the "smoke of sea-coal from the hundred thousand chimneys," the fumes of filth, which, notwithstanding the plague and fire, was still allowed to accumulate in the streets—all these told on a delicate constitution, and he was advised to remove to the purer air of Hampton Court. Built under the Tudors, the apartments were now too old-fashioned for the requirements of the seventeenth century, and it was elaborately remodelled. As William had laid out his gardens at the Hague, so now he had the famous gardens at Hampton Court laid out in the stiff formal style which had been adopted at Versailles. He introduced into England waterworks of quaint forms, parterres with fountains and jets of water and formal cascades, all designed by Dutch gardeners. They exaggerated the old manner of clipping trees and overcrowded gardens