This flag was the banner of the regiment of
guards on duty. The aspect of the interior court was as naked and dismal
as the outside, the brick being of that dark hue almost universal in
England. On one side of the court there was a door which seemed to give
admission to a chapel, into which several persons went, and probably we
might have gone too, had we liked. From this court, we penetrated into
at least two or three others; for the palace is very extensive, and all
of it, so far as I could see, on the same pattern,--large, enclosed
courts, paved, and quite bare of grass, shrubbery, or any beautiful
thing,--dark, stern, brick walls, without the slightest show of
architectural beauty, or even an ornament over the square, commonplace
windows, looking down on those forlorn courts. A carriage-drive passes
through it, if I remember aright, from the principal front, emerging by
one of the sides; and I suppose that the carriages roll through the
palace, at the levees and drawing-rooms. There was nothing to detain us
here any long time, so we went from court to court, and came out through
a side-opening. The edifice is battlemented all round, and this, with
somewhat of fantastic in the shape of the clock-tower, is the only
attempt at ornament in the whole.
Then we skirted along St. James's Park, passing Marlborough House,--a red
brick building,--and a very long range of stone edifices, which, whether
they were public or private, one house or twenty, we knew not.
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