Page:Hutton, William Holden - Hampton Court (1897).djvu/68

24 had already put on an air suited to the new design. How much the taste of the age approved this may be seen by what Defoe adds a little later, speaking, even if he be himself ironical, most unquestionably the sentiment of his day.

"When Hampton Court will find such another favourable juncture as in King William's time, when the remainder of her ashes shall be swept away, and her complete fabric, as designed by King William, shall be finished, I cannot tell; but if ever that shall be, I know no palace in Europe, Versailles excepted, which can come up to her, either for beauty and magnificence, or for extent of building and the ornaments attending it."

The plan drawn up by Wren in 1699 shows less the extent of the destruction contemplated than the sumptuousness of the new scheme. The great approach was to have been through Bushey Park, by the Lion Gates, to a new entrance court, which would have been 300 feet long by 230 feet broad. All the buildings on the north side up to the great hall would have been swept away. The great hall itself was to have been the entrance to the Palace. Great flights of steps and a fine colonnade were to have led to it. From the hall itself was to have been the entrance to the rest of the Palace, to the Clock court directly, and by intercommunication to all other parts.

Wren did not confine himself to a general design. Every detail, it is hardly too much to say, passed under his eye. An estimate, dated April 2, 1699,