verify this statement or to stay long in the comparatively airy crypt.
Damp as the British climate may be above ground, it is more so below.
We emerge to the fine range of state apartments above, and submit to
the rule of guide and guide-book.

[Illustration: LOCK AT WINDSOR.]

St. George's Hall, the Waterloo gallery, the council-chamber and the
Vandyck room are the most attractive, all of them for the historical
portraits they contain, and the first, besides, for its merit as an
example of a Gothic interior and its associations with the order of
the Garter, the knights of which society are installed in it. The
specialty of the Waterloo room is the series of portraits of the
leaders, civil and military, English and continental, of the last and
successful league against Napoleon. They are nearly all by Lawrence,
and of course admirable in their delineation of character. In that
essential of a good portrait none of the English school have excelled
Lawrence. We may rely upon the truth to Nature of each of the heads
before us; for air and expression accord with what history tells us
of the individuals, its verdict eked out and assisted by instructive
minutiæ of lineament and meaning detected, in the "off-guard" of
private intercourse, by the eye of a great painter and a lifelong
student of physiognomy. We glance from the rugged Blucher to the
wily Metternich, and from the philosophic Humboldt to the semi-savage
Platoff. The dandies George IV. and Alexander are here, but Brummel
is left out. The gem of the collection is Pius VII., Lawrence's
masterpiece, widely familiar by engravings. Raphael's Julius II. seems
to have been in the artist's mind, but that work is not improved on,
unless in so far as the critical eye of our day may delight in the
more intricate tricks of chiaroscuro and effect to which Lawrence has