"20th June. A person was taken into custody on Sunday evening by some gentlemen in St. James's Park, and delivered to the guard, for joining with and encouraging a mob to follow and grossly insult some ladies of fashion that were walking there, by which means they were put in great danger of their lives. He was yesterday brought before John Fielding and Theodore Sydenham, Esqrs., and this day the following submission appeared in the Daily Advertiser.' (The apology, which is humble enough, is then given.) Insults of this kind have, notwithstanding this advertisement, been since repeated, and several persons have been apprehended for the like offence, who, it is to be hoped, will be punished with the utmost severity, in order to put a stop to such outrageous behaviour on the verge of the Royal Palace."

A paragraph in the volume of the same publication for 1761 shows how the toe of the peasant continued to gall the kibe of the courtier:-" June 24th. Last Sunday some young gentlemen belonging to a merchant's counting-house, who were a little disgusted at the too frequent use of the bag-wig made by apprentices to the meanest mechanics, took the following method to burlesque that elegant piece of French furniture. Having a porter just come out of the country, they dressed him in a bag wig, laced ruffles, and Frenchified him up in the new mode, telling him that if he intended to make his fortune in town, he must dress himself like a gentleman on Sunday, go into the Mall in St. James's Park, and mix with people of the first rank. They went with him to the scene of action, and drove him in among his betters, where he behaved as he was directed, in a manner the most likely to render him conspicuous. All the company saw by the turning of his toes that the dancing-master had not done his duty; and by the swing of his arms, and his continually looking at his laced ruffles and silk stockings, they had reason to conclude it was the first time he had appeared in such a dress. The company gathered round him, which he at first took for applause, and held up his head a little higher than ordinary; but at last some gentlemen joining in conversation with him, by his dialect detected him and laughed him out of company. Several, however, seemed dissatisfied at the scoffs he received from a parcel of 'prentice boys, monkified in the same manner, who appeared like so many little curs round a mastiff, and snapped as he went along, without being sensible at the same time of their own weakness.”

The disappearance of those distinctive marks in dress, which formerly told at once to what class an individual belonged, the gradual rise in refinement among all orders of society, and the restriction on the part of the aristocracy of what may be termed their undress amusements within the seclusion of their domestic privacy, at last put an end to these unseemly and unpleasant scenes. St. James's Park is more crowded now than ever with those who really have a taste for its beauties, or who enjoy finding themselves private in a crowd. All classes now mingle there, but in the progress of civil refinement they have all been toned down to an uniformity of appearance. This may be less picturesque, and less calculated to afford materials for scenic display than the old system, but it is on the whole much more comfortable-to use the exclusively English phrase. As the transition from the antediluvian state of Parkhood before the Restoration to the state of a stage for the gay world to flutter on, subsequent to that event, was marked by a change in the disposition of the grounds, so has the compara

tively recent euthanasia of the age of beaux and belles. Nash, under the auspices of George IV., effected another transformation in the appearance of St. James's Park. It was high time that something should be done. Rosamond's Pond had long passed away from this sublunary scene, having been filled up about 1770; the decoy had vanished; the tenants of the Bird-cage Walk were nowhere to be The line of the Mall, and the formal length of the central canal, alone remained—formal and neglected in their formality. Enclosure of the central space, a judicious deviation from the straight line on the banks of the canal, and the planting of some new trees and shrubs, were all that was required to produce the present pleasing scene.

seen.

The "silent sister" (to borrow an epithet applied by Oxford and Cambridge to the Irish University) of the Green Park has only had the hand of judicious ornament extended to it within the present year. Its history is in a great measure like Viola's imaginary sister—" a blank." It was not fenced in by royal residences like St. James's Park, on the verge of which the monarchy of England has built its bower-first at Whitehall, then at St. James's, and now at Buckingham Palacefor three hundred years, unable to tear itself away. St. James's Park is, in some sort, an out-of-door vestibule or ante-chamber to the Palace-frequented at times, it must be confessed, by courtiers of sufficiently uncouth appearance. But the Green Park was, until a recent period, away from the abodes of royalty and out of town. Looking from Constitution Hill to the west, south, and east, the eye rested upon fields and meadows interspersed with villages. Piccadilly was not the street of palaces it has since become many mean buildings being to be found in it. The Green Park too (compared with its neighbours) was left bare of adornment, more resembling a village green than an appendage of royalty. During the last century it was occasionally a haunt for duellists, and at times the scene of outrages, such as Swift mentions being perpetrated at the door of Lord Winchelsea's house by the Mohocks. About the middle of the century some labourers employed in cutting a drain across it from Piccadilly, east of the Ranger's lodge, found a human skeleton, which did not appear to have been in the ground above thirty or forty years, and which bore traces of violence on the skull. Under the auspices of the new police, the Green Park, retaining its homeliness, has hitherto been a place for hand-ball and such amusements. The adornments of its neighbour are now extending to this neglected corner: it too has been set apart for the "enjoying of prospects."

It only remains to be mentioned, before we turn our attention to Hyde Park, that St. James's, although the seat where amusement seems to have taken up its favourite abode, has witnessed incidents of a more exciting character, in the same manner as the quiet of a domestic residence is sometimes invaded by the tragic occurrences of the restless world without. We read in the annals of the reign of Charles II., that the Duchess of Cleveland, walking one dark night across the Park from St. James's to Whitehall, was accosted and followed by three men in masks, who offered her no violence, but continued to denounce her as one of the causes of the national misery, and to prophesy that she would yet die the death of Jane Shore. It was at the entry to St. James's Palace from the Park that Margaret Nicholson attempted the life of George III. In the Park the same monarch received at one time the almost idolatrous homage of his subjects, and

at another was with difficulty rescued from the violence of the assembled multitude. Charles I. walked across the Park, guarded by a regiment of foot armed with partizans, to his execution at Whitehall. His son, James II., walked across the Park from St. James's, where he had slept, to Whitehall, on the morning of his coronation. When the Dutch guards of the Prince of Orange were by his orders marching through the Park to relieve the English guards of James posted at Whitehall, the stout old Lord Craven made show of resistance, but received his master's orders to withdraw, and marched off with sullen dignity. This was the nearest approach to the actual intrusion of war into the Park, except when Wyatt, in the reign of Mary, marched his troops along the outside of its northern wall, and the royal artillery playing upon them from the heights sent its balls into the Park. But the mimic show of war has often appeared there. George Colman the younger (who by the bye was a native of the Park-born in a house the property of the Crown, which stood near the south-east corner of Rosamond's Pond), referring to 1780, wrote:-" Although all scenery, except the scenery of a playhouse, was at that time lost upon me, I have thought since of the picturesque view which St. James's Park then presented: the encampment which had been formed in consequence of the recent riots (Lord George Gordon's) was breaking up, but many tents remained; and seeming to be scattered, from the removal of others, out of the formal line which they originally exhibited, the effect they produced under the trees and near the canal was uncommonly gay and pleasing." Such of the present generation as witnessed the tents of the artillery pitched in the Park the evening before the coronation of her present Majesty, can form a pretty accurate conception of the scene witnessed by Colman. To these reminiscences belong the childish splendour of the Temple of Concord, and fire-works in the Green Park, in 1749; and the Chinese Bridge and Pagoda, and fire-works in St. James's Park, in 1814.

3. HYDE PARK AND KENSINGTON GARDENS.

KENSINGTON GARDENS are properly part of Hyde Park. William III., not long after his accession to the throne, purchased from Daniel, second Earl of Nottingham, his house and gardens at Kensington. The extent of the gardens was about twenty-six acres, and with this William seems to have been perfectly satisfied. Even in this small space a part of the original Hyde Park was already included; for not long after 1661, Sir Heneage Finch, then Solicitor-General, obtained a grant of "All that ditch and fence which divide Hyde Park from the lands, grounds, and possessions of the said Sir Heneage Finch, adjacent to the said park, and all wood, underwood, and timber trees, growing and being within, upon, or about the said ditch and fence, containing in breadth ten feet, and in length one hundred and fifty roods, beginning from the south highway leading to the top of Kensington, and from thence crossing to the north highway leading to the town of Acton, which said piece of ground is by this grant disparked for ever." Queen Anne enclosed nearly thirty acres of the park (lying north of her conservatory) about 1705, and added them to the gardens. Caroline, Queen of George II., appropriated no less than three hundred acres of it, about 1730; and it is only since her time that the great enclosure of Kensington Gardens, and the curtailed Hyde Park, have a separate history.

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In the survey of church lands made in pursuance of an Act of Parliament of the 26th of Henry VIII., and returned into the Court of First Fruits, the "Manerium de Hyde," belonging to the "Monasterium Sanct. Petr. Westm.," is valued at " xiiijl." No notice having been preserved of the original enclosure of this park, and the first keeper on record (George Roper, who had a grant of 6d. per diem for his service) having been appointed early in the reign of Edward VI., it has been conjectured that the park was enclosed while the manor was still in the possession of the Abbot and Convent. The list of keepers who succeeded Roper is unbroken down to the time of the Commonwealth. In a patent of 16th of Elizabeth, granting the office to Henry Cary, Lord Hunsdon, mention is made of "the herbage, pannage, and browse-wood for the deer." In 1596 the custody of Hyde Park was granted to Sir Edmund Cary, Knight, "with all the lodges, houses, and edifices in the same," reserving to Anne Baroness Hunsdon, during her life," the lodge and mansion in the park, with the herbage and pannage of the same." The resolutions adopted by the House of Commons in 1652 relative to the sale of the Crown lands contain some curious details regarding Hyde Park.

The House resolved on the 21st of December, 1652, that Hyde Park should be sold for ready money; and in consequence of this resolution it was exposed for sale in parts, and sold to Richard Wilcox, of Kensington, Esq.; John Tracy, of London, merchant; and Anthony Deane, of St. Martin in the Fields, Esq. The first parcel, called the Gravel-pit division, containing 112 acres, 3 roods, 3 poles, was sold to Wilcox for 41417. 11s., of which sum 24287. 2s. 6d. was the price of the wood. The Kensington division, consisting of 147 acres, 3 roods, 16 poles, was purchased by Tracy, who paid 39067. 7s. 6d., of which only 2617. 7s. 6d. was for the wood. The other three divisions-the Middle, Banqueting-house, and Old Lodge divisions-were sold to Deane, and cost him 90207. 8s. 2d., of which 2210. was for the wood. At the south-west corner of the Banqueting-house division stood" that building intended at its first erection for a Banqueting-house:" its materials were valued at 1257. 12s. On the Old Lodge division stood the Old Lodge, with its barn and stable, and several tenements near Knightsbridge: the materials of the Lodge were valued at 1207. "The deer of several sorts within the said park" were valued at 7657. 6s. 2d. The ground and wood of Hyde Park were sold for 17,069/. 6. 8d.; the wood on it being (exclusive of the deer and building materials) valued at 50997. 19s. 6d. The yearly rental of the park was assumed to be 8941. 13s. 8d.

The specifications in the indentures of sale enable us to trace with accuracy the boundaries of the park at that time, and also to form some idea of its state and appearance. It was bounded by "the great road to Acton" on the north; by "the way leading from Brentford great road to Acton great road" on the east; by the road designated, in one part of its course, the " Knightsbridge highway," and in another, "the highway leading from Knightsbridge to Kensington," evidently the Brentford great road" mentioned above, on the south; and by part of the house and ground usually taken to belong to Mr. Finch of Kensington," and "the ground lying near the Gravel-pits," on the west. About three of these boundaries there is little difficulty: they are clearly the two great lines of road which pass along the north and south edges of the park at the present day, and what is now called Park Lane. The whole of the ground within these three

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