Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

UNCOMPLETED WORK 25
shows how minutely he had entered into the internal
as well as the external arrangements. He states the
stone required for the stairs, the "iron rayles of good
worke," while the wainscoting, and even the sewers and
the smoking-room to the Guard-chamber are considered.
From 1689 to 17 18, it may be said that Wren was
more or less actively concerned with building and with
supervision of Hampton. In that last year, when he
was eighty-five, he was dismissed from the post of
Surveyor-General of the Works. Still with his
mind unclouded, with a character which resisted all
attempts to belie it, he passed his last year " principally
in the consolation of the Holy Scriptures,
cheerful in solitude, and as well pleased to die in
the shade as in the light."
Wren's work at Hampton Court is the best
memorial of his power as a domestic architect. It
suffers to some extent from cramped surroundings,
and from his design never having been completed.
It is probable, too, indeed certain, that in some instances
he altered his plans by the direct orders of
William and Mary. But still, with its faults and
incompleteness, it is the greatest example of the
adaptation of the Louis Quatorze style in England,
and it is a monument worthy of a great man. With
Wren's life and with the accession of the House of
Hanover there passed away the chance of creating a
great English palace such as our sovereigns, unlike the
great Continentalmonarchs, have never possessed. The