king and court went to Richmond. All visitors, however, were required to appear in full dress, which must have lent a stately and recherché character to the scene. These occasional glimpses into the seclusion of sovereigns who were foreigners in the land they reigned over, contrast characteristically with the publicity-courting manners of the time of Charles II. The formal solitudes of Kensington, remote from the brilliant gaiety of the Ring and Mall, mark a new and widely different era. St. James's Park was the appropriate locality of a court in which Etherege, Suckling, Sedley, and Buckingham dangled. The umbrageous shades of Kensington, into which the clatter of the gaudy equipages at the further end of the park penetrated "like notes by distance made more sweet," was the equally appropriate retirement of a court, the type of whose literary characters was Sir Richard Blackmore, and from which the light graces of Pope kept at a distance. When the court ceased to reside at Kensington, the gardens were thrown entirely open. They still, however, retain so much of their original secluded character that they are impervious to horses and equipages. Between their influence and that of the Drive in Hyde Park, the whole of the latter has been drawn into the vortex of gaiety. Its eastern extremity, except along the Serpentine, still retains a homely character, contrasting with that which St. James's Park has long worn, and the Green Park is now assuming. It is questionable whether any attempt to make it finer would improve it. The effect produced by the swift crossing and re-crossing of equipages, and the passage of horsemen-the opportunity of mingling with the crowd of Sunday loungers and country cousins, congregated to catch a glimpse of the leading characters of the day, or determine the fashionable shade for demisaison trousers, constitute the attraction of the park. The living contents throw the scenery, amid which they move, into the shade. The plainness of the park, too, makes it perhaps a more fitting vestibule to the more ornamented gardens at its west end. It may be useful to some among our readers, if we point out the most eligible method of entering Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Enter from Grosvenorgate, in Park-lane. After crossing the drive, if your object is to see the company, walk first along the footpath, in the direction of Hyde Park-corner, where Apsley House now stands, and the Parliamentary fort once stood; then returning, extend your lounge on the other side, till you reach Cumberland-gate, near where the elms of Tyburn witnessed the execution of the "Gentle Mortimer;" and where, in after days, terminated the walk prescribed by way of penance to the Queen, of Charles I., by her Confessor, and the less voluntary excursions of many offenders against the law; and where an iron plate, bearing the inscription "Here stood Tyburn-turnpike," marks the last earthly resting-place of Oliver Cromwell. Do not forget to admire the little carriages for children, drawn 4.OLD ELM. by goats, which have a stand near Cumberland-gate. Next cross the park from Grosvenor-gate to the vestiges of the Ring, which scene of the gallantry of Charles II. you will in all probability find occupied by half a dozen little chimney-sweeps playing at pitchand-toss. Advance in the same direction till midway between the Ring and the farm-house, and you stand on the spot which witnessed the tragedy described by Swift, in the passage quoted above from his Journal to Stella.' Here turn down towards the Serpentine, and in passing admire the old elm-old amid an aged brotherhood, of which a representation is here inserted (Cut, No. 4); it served for many years as the stall of a humourous cobbler. Then passing along the edge of the Serpentine, hasten to reach the centre of the bridge which crosses it, and there allow your eyes to wander across the water to the gateways admitting to Hyde Park and Constitution Hill, and behind them to the towers of Westminster Abbey. This is also a favourable spot for a morning or mid-day peep into Kensington Gardens. It is a curious feeling with which one amid the freshness of a spring or summer's morning watches the boatman of the Humane Society slowly oaring his way across the "river," sparkling in the early sun, as if in quest of those who may have availed themselves of the silence of night to terminate their earthly sufferings in the water. It reminds one of the horrible grotesque of the inscription below a plate of Rosamond's-pond, which we quote when talking of Once in Kensington Gardens, you cannot go wrong. Ramble deviously on, past the Lodge, (Cut, No. 5), which is in summer perfectly brilliant with flowers, along the vistas and through the thickets, now surrounded by nibbling sheep, now eyeing the gambols of the squirrel, till you come into the airy space surrounded by the palace, the banqueting-house of Queen Anne, and stately trees, where a still pond lies mirroring the soft blue sky. that scene. ST. JAMES'S PARK. In this we include the Green Park, a good quiet soul with a separate name, but without separate adventures or history. There are also some neighbouring patches of ground now detached which must be included in an account of St. James's Park, ancient and modern. more decorated line of buildings which form the eastern boundary of the Green Park in front. The pictures on every hand are at this point perfect in regard to composition: the arrangement of trees, lawn, and archi tecture is simply elegant. Turning to the right hand, at the mansion of the Duke of Sutherland, we come into St. James's Park, and, crossing the mall, enter the ornamented enclosure in front of the palace. Once here, it is a matter of perfect indifference what way the loiterer turns-only, if it be possible, he ought to get upon the grass as soon as he can. From the side at which we have supposed him to enter, he catches through the trees as he moves along such partial glances of the palace, or of the Government offices at the opposite end of the park, as make pretty pictures out of very questionable architecture. Opposite him he has the majestic receptacle of the dead royalty of old England. If he prefer the opposite side of the central sheet of water, the most eligible point of view is on the rising near the angle at Buckingham Gate, affording a fine view, closed by the dome of St. Paul's. To turn to our gourmand metaphor after he has discussed these pièces de résist ance he may fill up the interstices of his appetite by discussing, hors d'oeuvres, the pretty vignettes of wood and water which present themselves to a saunterer round the canal. (Cut, No. 6.) This is the still life, but in the "enjoyment of prospects" the shifting of the human and other figures is the most material source of pleasure to the spectator. Along the track which we have been pursuing in imagination, there is rich variety: from the glance and dash of equipages along Piccadilly to the pedestrians of the Green Park; thence to the stately noiseless sweep of the privileged vehicles of the nobility along the mall, enlivened by the occasional passage of a horseman, who rides as if the fate of empires depended on his keeping the appointment to which he is bound; and thence again into the ornamented enclosure, where, in the absence of other company, we are sure of the birds. There are worse companions than birds. We remember once hearing the most sparkling writer in the Northern Review' complain that he had not been able to sleep the whole of the preceding night. "What did you do, then?" asked a gentleman at his elbow, in a tone of intense sympathy. "I got up," said the invalid, with an air of languid pleasure, "went into the dressingroom, and talked with the parrot." And many an hour of pleasant intercourse may be spent with the water-fowl in St. James's Park, whether they be showing the ease with which habit has taught them to mingle in crowded society; or with their heads under their wings sleeping on the smooth water at eight o'clock in the morning-for like other inhabitants of the pleasure seeking world of London, they have acquired bad It is impossible to saunter about St. James's Park without being struck by its beauties. If, however, any person wishes to enjoy them like a true epicure-to take as much of the beautiful and exclude as much of the common-place as possible-to heighten the pleasure of each succeeding morsel by a judicious regard to harmony in the order in which they succeed each other, -it will be advisable to enter through the Green Park by the gate opposite Hamilton Place, at the west end of Piccadilly. Lounging (quick business-like walking is only for those unamiable localities one wishes to get out of) onwards by the walk that descends close by the spot formerly occupied by the Ranger's lodge, the eye passes along a vista between trees, at this moment covered with the first delicate verdure of spring, to rest upon a beautiful line of wood in the middle distance, out of which rise the towers of Westminster Abbey. Looking to the right as we advance, the royal standard of England, the most chastely gorgeous banner in the world, is floating at the foot of Constitution-hill. Immediately afterwards a massive corner of the Palace is seen between the trees nearer at hand. The walk here parts into two-that on the left hand descending into what has all the appearance from this point of a woody dell; the other carry-habits of late rising or in the intoxication of returning ing us into an open space, where we have a view of the white marble arch in front of the Palace, surmounted by the standard on one side, the unobtrusively wealthy mansions of Piccadilly on the other, and the spring, wheeling in pursuit of each other in long circles overhead, then rushing down into their native elements, and ploughing long furrows in it on St. Valentine's Day. We want some new White of Selborne to come We park." So long as the tilt-yard maintained its interest, the space beyond it would have few attractions for the gazing public. On either side of the park there was a place of resort preferred by the loungers of the times anterior to the Restoration--Spring Garden and the Mulberry Garden. here, and, heedless of the din of revolutions, busy the occasion referred to by Pepys into "the inward himself deep in the philosophy of water-fowl. can conceive such a man not only spending a long life in this way, but publishing such a book at the close, as would make us regret he had not lived still longer to be able to do justice to the subject. Gentle reader, did you ever see a swan yawn? We have. Not with its mouth certainly. No, with an irresistible air of languor he draws up one leg close to his body, and then slowly stretches it out-very slowly, but further and further still, with such evident gusto and relief, that your own jaws expand in sympathy. Here, too, one touch of Nature make the whole world kin." St. James's Park, with its exquisite finish, surrounded on all sides by buildings, scarcely disturbed by vehicles or horsemen, always wears in our eyes a drawing-room character: it is a sort of in-doors rurality, and such it has been ever since we have records of it as a public haunt. 66 Its history falls naturally into three epochs ::-from the first enclosure of the park by Henry VIII. to its reformation under the auspices of Le Notre, under Charles II.; from the time of the merry monarch till the abolition of the old formal canal by George IV. and Nash; and the era in which we have the pleasure to exist. The history of the first of these periods ought to be written by an author like Niebuhr, who feels himself put out by facts and contemporary narratives, and builds up a story more true than truth out of hints in old fragments of laws, treaties, and charters. At least the materials are too scanty to admit of treating it in any other fashion. During the reigns of Elizabeth and the first two Stuarts, St. James's Park can only be considered as a nursery for deer and an appendage to the tilt-yard. The frequent allusions to it as a place of rendezvous by the dramatists of the age of Charles II. are sought in vain in Shakspere and his contemporaries, with whom St. Paul's occupies its place. It could not well be otherwise. A visit to the palace at Westminster was then going out of London, and to have gone out of the palace into the park would have been in the way of pleasure-hunting a work of supererogation-gilding refined gold. A passage occurs in Pepys's Diary,' which enables us to form an idea of the comparative seclusion of the park in these days. The date of the entry is not much earlier than that of the notice of the alterations made by Charles II., which ushered in the second period of the park's history: "1660, July 22nd. Went to walk in the inward park, but could not get in; one man was basted by the keeper for carrying some people over on his back through the water." If the reader will consult one of the earlier maps of London, he will find a long, narrow, four-cornered piece of water introduced behind the tilt-yard, extending nearly from side to side of the park, at right angles to the direction of the canal constructed in the time of Charles II. This apparently is the piece of water across which the crowd attempted to get themselves smuggled on The period at which Spring Garden was enclosed and laid out is uncertain. The clump of houses which still bears the name, indicates its limits with tolerable exactness. A servant of the court was allowed in the time of Charles I. to keep an ordinary and bowlinggreen in it. An idea of the aspect of the garden at that time may be gathered from a letter of Mr. Garrard to the Earl of Stafford in 1634:-" The bowling-green in the Spring Gardens was put down one day by the king's command; but by the intercession of the queen it was reprieved for this year; but hereafter it shall be no common bowling-place. There was kept an ordinary of six shillings a meal (where the king's proclamation allows but two elsewhere), continual bibbing and drinking wine under all trees; two or three quarrels every week. It was grown scandalous and insufferable; besides, my Lord Digby being reprehended for striking in the king's garden, he said he took it for a common bowling-place." The king carried his point; for in a subsequent letter Mr. Garrard says:-"Since the Spring Garden was put down, we have, by a servant of the lord-chamberlain's, a new Spring Garden erected in the fields behind the Meuse, where is built a fair house and two bowling-greens, made to entertain gamesters and bowlers to an excessive rate; for I believe it has cost him 400l.; a dear undertaking for a gentleman barber." The gardens must, however, have been re-opened at a later period, for Evelyn has this entry in his diary, 13th June, 1649:-" Dined with Sir John Owen; and afterwards I treated divers ladies of my relations in Spring Gardens." They were again shut up under Oliver Cromwell, as we learn from the same source:-" 13th June, 1649. Lady Gerrard treated us at Mulberry Garden, now the only place of refreshment about the town for persons of the best quality to be exceedingly cheated at; Cromwell and his partisans having shut up and seized on Spring Gardens, which till now had been the usual rendezvous for ladies and gallants at this season." The Restoration again gave them to the public; in evidence of which a passage from a writer of the seventeenth century* may be cited, which bears more properly upon a later period of park history, but being introduced here will prevent the necessity of recurring to this branch of the subject:-" The inclosure (Spring Gardens) is not disagreeable, for the solemnness of the grove, the warbling of the birds, and as it opens into the spacious walk at St. James's; but the company walk in at such a rate you would think (all the ladies were so many Atalantas contending with their wooers; but * Quoted, but not named, in Brayley's 'Middlesex.' as they run, they stay so long as if they wanted time to finish the race: for it is usual to find some of the young company here till midnight." The Mulberry Garden was planted by order of James I., who attempted in 1608 to produce silk in England, and to that end imported many hundred thousand mulberry-trees from France, some of which were planted under his own inspection, and the rest dispersed through all the counties, with circular letters directing the planting of the trees, and giving instructions for the breeding and feeding of silk worms. In 1629 a grant was made to Walter, Lord Aston, &c., of "the custody of the garden, mulberry-trees, and silk-worms, near St. James's, in the county of Middlesex." How soon after this the silk-worms disappeared and the gardens were opened to the gay world in the manner indicated by the above quotation from Evelyn, does not appear. He does not speak of the opening of the Mulberry Gardens as anything new. A passage in Pepys's 'Diary,' not long after the Restoration, mentions a visit to these gardens, but speaks rather disparagingly of their attractions. Buckingham House, which stood where the central part of the palace now stands, was erected by John, Duke of Buckingham, in 1703, and the Mulberry Garden attached to the house as private property. Previously Arlington House, and a building to which the name of Tart-hall is given in some old plans, occupied the same site. These buildings seem to indicate the period at which the Mulberry Gardens ceased to be a place of public resort. Some indications exist of St. James's having become to a certain extent a favourite lounge during, or immediately previous to the civil war. Dr. King observes, "The fate of things lies always in the dark: What cavalier would know St. James's Park? 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. 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. 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 above. (Cut, No. 7.) 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 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 |