made it impossible for him to reside at Whitehall. The air of
Westminster, mingled with tile fog of the river which in spring
tides overflowed the courts of his palace, with the smoke of
seacoal from two hundred thousand chimneys, and with the fumes of
all the filth which was then suffered to accumulate in the
streets, was insupportable to him; for his lungs were weak, and
his sense of smell exquisitely keen. His constitutional asthma
made rapid progress. His physicians pronounced it impossible that
he could live to the end of the year. His face was so ghastly
that he could hardly be recognised. Those who had to transact
business with him were shocked to hear him gasping for breath,
and coughing till the tears ran down his cheeks.59 His mind,
strong as it was, sympathized with his body. His judgment was
indeed as clear as ever. But there was, during some months, a
perceptible relaxation of that energy by which he had been
distinguished. Even his Dutch friends whispered that he was not
the man that he had been at the Hague.60 It was absolutely
necessary that he should quit London. He accordingly took up his
residence in the purer air of Hampton Court. That mansion, begun
by the magnificent Wolsey, was a fine specimen of the
architecture which flourished in England under the first Tudors;
but the apartments were not, according to the notions of the
seventeenth century, well fitted for purposes of state. Our
princes therefore had, since the Restoration, repaired thither
seldom, and only when they wished to live for a time in
retirement. As William purposed to make the deserted edifice his
chief palace, it was necessary for him to build and to plant; nor
was the necessity disagreeable to him. For he had, like most of
his countrymen, a pleasure in decorating a country house; and
next to hunting, though at a great interval, his favourite