Page:Hutton, William Holden - Hampton Court (1897).djvu/21

 INTRODUCTION

"I AM never merry when I hear sweet music." So, when the "spirits are attentive," is it with the sight of a beautiful old house. The memories of those who have lived in and loved it crowd in upon the mind. Their passions and their sorrows seem to speak now like the "music of the spheres," in a solemn cadence that only the thoughtful and abstracted heart can hear. They are become part of Nature: all that strange symphony of colour and sound and feeling that breathes in upon us as we walk the courts where they lingered, or trace their names cut with a diamond on the old window-panes, or pray where they too have laid down their sins,—all that subtle impression that steals over us and saddens is made of their struggles and their tears. There, we say, men have worked out their lives in duty and loyalty and faith: or there they have made shipwreck, driven by fierce demons of desire, for fame, for pleasure, or for wealth. And now they sleep so still, and thousands pass by and heed them not: and yet they are part of it all, this great Palace, this home of English history, this chronicle in little of what men have done and suffered for their country and their age. Here Wolsey planned to restore the greatness of England. Here Elizabeth ix