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Rh the privileges which the sovereign has so generously bestowed.

Not only has Mr. Law studied the Palace and its history with the minute care of a scholar and antiquary: he has also continued most successfully the work of Mr. Jesse and Sir Henry Cole in popularising the knowledge which can alone enable visitors to rightly enjoy the beauties which they witness.

Those who wish to study the records of the Palace will find at every turn that Mr. Law has been before them. I have searched the State Papers for references to the events that happened at Hampton Court from the days of Wolsey onward, but hardly ever have I come across information which Mr. Law has not discovered and utilised. It is the same with the classical literature of England, and with the books in which foreign travellers have set down their impressions. All I can do, then, is to express most cordially my gratitude to Mr. Law for his catalogue and his guide-book, and for the three noble volumes in which he has told the history of the Palace from its earliest days to the present time, and to say that, though much that is in my book is also in his, and I have learnt, as has every one who has been in Hampton Court, from him, yet I hope it will appear that the aim and style of my book does not bring it into any comparison or competition with his.

That is the first and foremost of my obligations. Next to it I must place the kind and generous help of the Rev. A. G. Ingram, Chaplain in Ordinary to Her