For Locket's stands where gardens once did spring,

And wild ducks quack where grasshoppers did sing;
A princely palace on that space does rise

Where Sudley's noble muse found mulberries."

After Charing Cross had become more and more connected by lines of buildings with the City, and private dwelling-houses had multiplied along three sides of the Park by Pall-Mall and King Street, and the streets behind Queen Square, and when tournaments fell into disuse, the temptation to penetrate into the recesses of the Park would increase; and the lines just quoted seem to point at a tradition that it was a favourite haunt of the Cavaliers. The privilege, if it at all existed, would seem, however, from the scene described by Pepys at the piece of water behind the tilt-yard, to have been enjoyed on a rather precarious tenure. The mention which occasionally occurs in the records of Cromwell's time, of "the Lord Protector taking the air in St. James's Park in a sedan," makes neither for nor against its accessibility to the public; but is worthy of being noticed in passing on account of the ludicrous association between the rough conqueror at Worcester and a conveyance identified, in our notions, with the less robust wits of a later generation. The admission of the public in all probability scarcely extended beyond what Pepys, by implication, calls the outward Park. In the time of Charles I. a sort of royal menagerie had begun to take the place of the deer with which the "inward Park" was stocked in the days of Henry and Elizabeth.

So far our history has been based upon a very slender foundation. With the restoration of Charles II. begins the era of the Park's existence as a public haunt, and materials for its history become accessible.

The design according to which the Park was laid out has been generally attributed to Le Notre. Charles seems to have set to work with its adornment immediately on his return. The original disposition of the grounds under Henry VIII., it may easily be conceived, presented little that was striking, and neglect during the civil wars must have dilapidated that little. A taste for ornamental gardening seems to have grown upon the King during his residence on the Continent, which along with his fondness for walking would naturally make him desirous to have the grounds in the immediate vicinity of his residence made more sightly than he found them. At all events, he commenced his improvements very soon after his return. We can trace the progress of the operations in Pepys's Diary :'

"1660. Sept. 16. *** To the Park, where I saw how far they had proceeded in the Pall-Mall, and in making a river through the Park which I had never seen before since it was begun. *** October 11. To walk in St. James's Park, where we observed the several engines at work to draw up water, with which sight I was very much pleased. Above all the rest I liked that which Mr. Greatorex brought, which do carry up the water with a great deal of ease. *** 1661. August 4. Walked into St. James's Park (where I had not been a great while). and there found great and very noble alterations. *** 1662. July 27. I went to walk in the Park, which is now every day more and more pleasant by the new works upon it."

All the future representations of the Park during the reign of Charles II. exhibit to us his long rows of young elm and lime-trees, fenced round with

palings to protect them from injury. We have such a row in front of the old Horse Guards, and another such following the line of the canals. These are occasionally relieved by some fine old trees, as in Tempest's view below.

We are able from various sources, plans, engravings, and incidental notices in books, to form a tolerably accurate notion of the aspect which the Park assumed in the course of these operations. At the end nearest Whitehall was a line of buildings occupying nearly the site of the present range of Government offices. Wallingford House stood on the site of the Admiralty; the old Horse Guards, the Tennis-yard, Cock-pit, and other appendages of Whitehall, on the sites of the present Horse Guards, Treasury, and offices of the Secretaries of State. The buildings then occupied by the Admiralty stood where the gate entering from Great George Street now is. From Wallingford House towards Pall-Mall were the Spring Gardens, opening as we have seen into the Park.

The south wall of the King's Garden extended in a line with the part of it which still remains behind the Palace of St. James's, at least as far as the west end of Carlton Terrace. Marlborough House was built on a part of the garden at a subsequent period. This wall, and its continuation at the back of Carlton Gardens, formed the north boundary of the Park between Spring Gardens and the west end of St. James's Palace. The Duke of Buckingham in a letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury, in which he describes this part of the Park as serving the purpose of an avenue to his newly erected mansion, gives us a notion of its appearance in the beginning of the 18th century :-"The avenues to this house arc along St. James's Park, through rows of goodly elms on one hand and gay flourishing limes on the other; that for coaches, this for walking, with the Mall lying betwixt them." The Mall itself, a vista half a mile in length, received its name from a game at ball, for which was formed a hollow smooth walk, enclosed on each side by a border of wood, and having an iron hoop at one extremity. The curiously inquiring Mr. Pepys records :-"1663, May 15. I walked in the Park, discoursing with the keeper of the Pall-Mall, who was sweeping of it; who told me that the earth is mixed that do floor the Mall, and that over all there is cockle-shells powdered and spread to keep it fast; which, however, in dry weather turns to dust and deads the ball."

The game was, however, played somewhat differently, even in the Park. In a drawing of the time of Charles II., engraved in Smith's Antiquities of Westminster,' we observe a high pole, with a hoop suspended from an arm at its top, and through this the ball was driven. A similar representation occurs in a picture engraved in Carter's Westminster.'

Immediately to the south of the east end of the Mall and in front of the Horse Guards was the great parade. The rest of the Park was an enclosure of grassplots intersected by walks, planted, and having a broad canal running from the parade to the end next Buckingham House. On the south of this canal, near its east end, was the decoy, a triangular nexus of smaller canals, where water-fowl were kept. The ground contained within the channels of the decoy was called Duck Island; of which Sir John Flock and St. Evremond were in succession appointed governors (with a salary) by Charles II. Westward from the decoy, on the same side of the canal and connected with it by a sluice, was Rosamond's Pond. What fancy first suggested this name it might be difficult to conjecture, but this serio-comic description, at the bottom of an engraving of it in Pennant's Collection, tempts to the remark that it was prophetic of the use which was afterwards to be made of it :-" The south-west corner of St. James's Park was enriched with this romantic scene. The irregularity of the trees, the rise of the ground, and the venerable Abbey, afforded great entertainment to the contemplative eye. This spot was often the receptacle of many unhappy persons, who in the stillness of an evening plunged themselves into eternity."

The Bird-cage Walk, leading along the south side of the decoy and Rosamond's Pond, nearly in the same line as the road which still retains the name, was so named from the cages of an aviary disposed among the trees which bordered it. A road entered the Park at the west end, near where Buckingham Gate now stands, crossing it between the Mulberry Garden and the termination of Bird-cage

Walk, the Canal and the Mall. On reaching the last-mentioned it turned off to the west, and wound up Constitution Hill towards Hyde Park Corner. Out of some fields which Charles is said to have added to the Park, arose in all probability the Green Park, enclosed between this road, the Mall, the houses west of St. James's Street, and Piccadilly, or as it was then called to the west of Devonshire House, Portugal Street. The Green Park consisted and consists of the declivity of two eminences between which the Ty-burn once flowed into the Mulberry Gardens, and thence to Tothill Fields and the Thames. The Ranger's House was erected on the slope of the western eminence, immediately south of Piccadilly.

Both Charles and the Duke of York appear to have taken an interest in the animals with which the Park was stocked. Pepys remarks, on the 16th of March, 1662, that while spending an hour or two in the Park, "which is now very pleasant," he "saw the King and Duke come to see their fowle play." Evelyn has left a short account of the collection in his Diary, 1664-5, Feb. 9.

The elegance of the Park transformed into a garden, with the attractions of the rare animals for the curious and the Mall for the gamesters, rendered it immediately the favourite haunt of the court. Charles, whose walking propensities seem to have rendered him a sort of perpetual motion, spent much of his leisure—that is of his whole time-there. Cibber tells us that "his indolent amusement of playing with his dogs and feeding his ducks in St. James's Park (which I have seen him do) made the common people adore him." It deserves to be mentioned that this taste for feeding the ducks once stood the peculators of the Mews in good stead. An inquiry having been instituted into the causes of the enormous waste of corn in the royal stables, the whole pilfering was laid on the shoulders of the King-he took it for his water-fowl. He was an early riser, which was sorely complained of by his attendants, who did not sleep off their debauches so lightly. Burnet complained that the King walked so fast, it was a trouble to keep up with him. When Prince George of Denmark complained on one occasion that he was growing fat, "Walk with me," said Charles, "and hunt with my brother, and you will not long be distressed with growing fat." Dr. King, on the authority of Lord Cromarty, has enabled us to accompany the merry monarch in one of his walks. The King, accompanied by the Duke of Leeds and Lord Cromarty, had taken two or three turns in St. James's Park, and after proceeding up Constitution Hill, which was then quite in the country, he encountered the Duke of York returning from hunting as he was about to cross into Hyde Park. The Duke alighted to pay his respects, and expressed his uneasiness at seeing his brother with so small an attendance: "No kind of danger, James," said Charles, "for I am sure no man in England would kill me to make you King." Another of the merry monarch's strolls in the Park is characteristic, and rendered more piquant by the decorous character of the narrator, Evelyn, in whose company he was at the time:-" 1671. March 1. * * * I thence walked with him (King Charles) through St. James's Park to the garden, where I both saw and heard a very familiar discourse between Mrs. Nellie, as they called an impudent comedian, she looking out of her garden on a terrace at the top of the wall, and *** **** (sic in orig.) standing on the green walk under it. I was heartily sorry at this scene. Thence the King walked to the Duchess of Cleveland, another lady of pleasure and curse of our nation." During this interview with "Mrs. Nellie" the King was standing in the royal garden already mentioned

as constituting the northern boundary of the Park-the same garden in which we find Master Pepys in his 'Diary' stealing apples like a school-boy. "Mrs. Nellie" looked down upon him from the wall of a small garden behind her house (near 79, Pall Mall)—the scene presents a curious pendant to the garden-scene in Romeo and Juliet. Nearly on the same spot was subsequently erected the stately mansion in which old Sarah of Marlborough indulged her spleen. All the associations which gather round this simple adventure are most grotesquely contrasted. Perhaps, however, a little incident related by Coke is even more characteristic of Charles, from its contrasting his loitering, gossiping habits with public and private suffering. Coke was one day in attendance on the King, who, having finished feeding his favourites, was proceeding towards St. James's, and was overtaken at the further end of the Mall by Prince Rupert. "The King told the Prince how he had shot a duck, and such a dog fetched it; and so they walked on till the King came to St. James's House and there the King said to the Prince, 'Let's go and see Cambridge and Kendal,' the Duke of York's two sons, who then lay a-dying. But upon his return to Whitehall he found all in an uproar, the Countess Castlemaine, as it was said, bewailing above all others that she should be the first torn in pieces." The news of the arrival of the Dutch fleet in the river had just been received. Pepys gives in his 'Diary' a fine picture of a court cavalcade in the Park, all flaunting with feathers, in which the same Castlemaine takes a prominent part, while the King appears between her and his lawful wife and Mrs. Stuart (with reverence be it spoken) not unlike Macheath "with his doxies around:"- 1663. July 13. *** I met the Queen-mother walking in the Pall Mall led by my Lord St. Albans; and finding many coaches at the gate, I found upon inquiry that the Duchess is brought to bed of a boy; and hearing that the King and Queen are rode abroad with the ladies of honour to the Park, and seeing a great crowd of gallants staying here to see their return, I also staid, walking up and down. By and by the King and Queen, who looked in this dress (a white laced waistcoat and a crimson short petticoat, and her hair dressed à la negligence) mighty pretty; and the King rode hand in hand with her. Here was also my Lady Castlemaine rode among the rest of the ladies; but the King took no notice of her, nor when she light did anybody press (as she seemed to expect and staid for it) to take her down, but was taken down by her own gentlemen. She looked mighty out of humour, and had a yellow plume in her hat (which all took notice of), and yet is very handsome but very melancholy; nor did anybody speak to her, or she so much as smile or speak to anybody. I followed them up into Whitehall, and into the Queen's presence, where all the ladies walked, talking and fiddling with their hats and feathers, and changing and trying one another's heads and laughing. But it was the finest sight to see, considering their great beauties and dress, that ever I did see in all my life. But above all Mrs. Stuart in this dress with her hat cocked and a red plume, with her sweet eye, little Roman nose, and excellent taille, is now the greatest beauty I ever saw, I think, in my life, and if ever woman do exceed my Lady Castlemaine, at least in this dress; nor do I wonder if the King changes, which I really believe is the reason of his coldness to my Lady Castlemaine."

It would have been in vain to rebuke Charles while alive, and would be still more vain now. We must take him as he was, a fine healthy animal, restless to the last degree, but without any purpose in his activity. His brother James