seems to have indulged more in the human propensity to load care on his shoulders-to attempt to do something, instead of letting things take their own way, like his wise brother. We know from Pepys that the Duke had a taste, and even a talent for business, and we know from history that he lost his crown because he would be meddling and altering the institutions of his kingdom. We never meet him idling in the park like Charles; he is always doing something. We have already seen him returning from hunting (contrasting with his lounging brother, like Industry and Idleness in Hogarth's prints), and heard Charles's allusion to his indefatigable pursuit of the chase. Pepys often encounters him in the park, but always actively engaged:-" 1661. April 2. To St. James's Park, where I saw the Duke of York playing at pall-mall, the first time that ever I saw the sport." And "1662. Dec. 15. To the Duke, and followed him into the park, where, though the ice was broken, he would go slide upon his skaits, which I did not like, but he slides very well." This, by the way, is as good a place as any to mention that at the time of the entry just quoted skaiting was a novelty in England. A little earlier we read in Pepys :-" 1662. Dec. 1. * Over the park, where I first in my life, it being a great frost, did see people sliding with their skaits, which is a very pretty art." Evelyn was also present, for we find in his 'Diary:'—" 1662. Dec. 1. Having seen the strange and wonderful dexterity of the sliders on the new canal in St. James's Park performed before their Majesties by divers gentlemen and others with scheets, after the manner of the Hollanders, with what a swiftness they pause, how suddenly they stop in full career upon the ice, went home." It is probable that some of the exiled Cavaliers had acquired the art, seeking to while away the tedium of a Dutch winter, and that but for the temporary overthrow of the monarchy we never should have had skaiting in England. At least Pepys speaks of it as something new, and Evelyn as Dutch ; and we know of no other notices to form a link between this full-blown art of skaiting (the word "scheets" used by Evelyn is Dutch), and the rude beginnings of it recorded by Fitzstephen.* What a source of additional interest to the winter landscape of our parks would have been lost but for the temporary ascendancy of the Long Parliament and Cromwell! Even so late as the days of Swift, skaiting seems to have been little known or practised out of London. In the Journal to Stella, he says (January 1711):-" Delicate walking weather, and the canal and Rosamond's Pond full of the rabble, sliding, and with skaits, if you know what that is."

Where such gay doings were going on on the canal in winter, and in the Mall all the year round, crowds were attracted by curiosity. The game itself attracted to the latter many who were fond of exercise, and many who liked to display their figures. To St. James's Park," wrote Pepys on the 1st of January, 1664,

* "Others there are who are still more expert in their amusements on the ice: they place certain bones, the leg-bones of some animal, under the soles of their feet, by tying them round their ankles, and then, taking a pole shod with iron into their hands, they push themselves forward by striking it against the ice, and are carried along with a velocity equal to that of a bird, or a ball discharged from a cross-bow. Sometimes two of them thus furnished agree to stand opposite to one another, at a great distance; they meet-elevate their poles-attack and strike each other, when one or both of them fall, and not without some bodily hurt; and even after their fall they shall be carried a good distance from each other by the rapidity of the motion." A tournament on the ice, not unlike the water-quintain. In Holland the immense extent of frozen canals in winter led to the employment of skaits in that season, and consequently to the perfection of the implement: in England, where skaiting never can be anything but an amusement, the art seems to have remained in its primitive rudeness till the Dutch taught it to the Cavaliers.

seeing many people play at pall-mall, where it pleased me mightily to hear a gallant, lately come from France, swear at one of his companions for suffering his man (a spruce blade) to be so saucy as strike a ball while his master was playing on the Mall." But more contemplative personages enjoyed a walk in the park. The Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn bear witness how often they visited it. And in a letter addressed to Sir Christopher Wren (one of the earliest members of the Royal Society along with Pepys and Evelyn) in 1663, Bishop Sprat says::"You may recollect we went lately from Axe-yard to walk in St. James's Park, &c." But for the gay flutterers of the park in " Charles's easy reign," we must draw upon the poets who painted from life. Keeping in remembrance a passage formerly quoted, which tells us that Spring Gardens opened upon the Mall, the Duke of Buckingham's description of the Mall, with its lindens and elms, and way for foot passengers on one side and that for carriages on the other, and that there was then as now an entry to the park from Pall-Mall at the west end of St. James's Palace, the reader will find no difficulty in filling up the outlines of this sketch by Etherege :—

the

"Enter Sir Fopling Flutter and his equipage.

"Sir Fop. Hey! bid the coachman send home four of his horses, and bring the coach to Whitehall; I'll walk over the park. Madam, the honour of kissing your fair hands is a happiness I missed this afternoon at my Lady Townly's.

"Lev. You were very obliging, Sir Fopling, the last time I saw you there. "Sir Fop. The preference was due to your wit and beauty. Madam, your servant. There never was so sweet an evening.

66

Bellinda. "T has drawn all the rabble of the town hither.

"Sir Fop. 'Tis pity there's not an order made that none but the beau monde should walk here.

"Lev. "Twould add much to the beauty of the place. See what a set of nasty fellows are coming.

"Enter four ill-fashioned fellows, singing—' 'Tis not for kisses alone,' &c. "Lev. Fo! Their perriwigs are scented with tobacco so strong—

"Sir Fop. It overcomes my pulvilio.-Methinks I smell the coffee-house they come from.

"1. Man. Dorimant's convenient, Madam Loveit.

"2. Man. I like the Oylie-buttock that's with her.

"3. Man. What spruce prig is that?

"1. Man. A Caravan lately come from Paris.

"2. Man. Peace, they smoak-(sings)

"There's something else to be done," &c.

(All of them coughing-exeunt singing.)"

After the death of Charles II., St. James's Park ceased to be the favourite haunt of the sovereign. The burning of Whitehall, by occasioning the removal of the Court, may in part account for this-in part, the less gossiping turn of succeeding sovereigns. But the love of their subjects for this pleasing lounge was more lasting. Swift was a great frequenter of the Park. On the 8th of February, 1711, he wrote to Stella-"I walked in the Park to-day, in spite of the weather, as I do every day when it does not actually rain;" and on the 21st

:

of the same month-"The days are now long enough to walk in the Park after dinner; and so I do whenever it is fair. This walking is a strange remedy: Mr. Prior walks to make himself fat; and I, to bring myself down; he has generally a cough, which he only calls a cold: we often walk round the Park together." It was a family taste with Prior. Swift, expressing astonishment at so young a man standing so high in office, dilates upon the youthfulness of his father:"His father is a man of pleasure, that walks the Mall, and frequents St. James's Coffee-house and the chocolate-houses, and the young son is Secretary of State." The Dean, giving an account of his evening walks to his lodgings in Chelsea, incidentally lets us know that the ladies too continued their patronage of the Park:"1711. May 15. My way is this: I leave my best gown and periwig at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, then walk up the Pall Mall, out at Buckingham House, and so to Chelsea, a little beyond the church. I set out about sunset and get there in something less than an hour: it is two good miles, and just 5748 steps. When I pass the Mall in the evening it is prodigious to see the number of ladies walking there; and I always cry shame at the ladies of Ireland, who never walk at all, as if their legs were of no use but to be laid aside." His taste for evening walks experienced an interruption during the brief reign of the Mohocks: he had been frightened by some of his friends, who told him that these worthies had an especial malice against his person." March 9, 1712. walked in the Park this evening, and came home early, to avoid the Mohocks." Again, on the 16th, "Lord Winchelsea told me to-day at court that two of the Mohocks caught a maid of old Lady Winchelsea's, at the door of their house in the Park, with a candle, who had just lighted out somebody. They cut all her face and beat her, without any provocation."

*

Making allowance, however, for this brief ague fit, the years during which Swift was writing his 'Journal to Stella' were probably the happiest of his life. The tone of the Journal is triumphant, sanguine of the future, dictatorial. In his imagination he is the arm that alone upholds the ministry, and he is wreaking old grudges against Whigs whom he disliked, and against Whigs (Steele and Addison) with whom he had no quarrel, except that they would not turn with him. He is petulant as a schoolboy, and quite as happy. The best of his playful hits of malice belong to this period. And yet, with the page of his after life now lying open before us, there is something painful in the intoxication of his gratified vanity. We are aware of its momentary duration, and of the long years of repining in a narrower sphere, wasting his strength upon trifles through sheer horror of repose, paying a heavy penalty for his arrogance during his short exaltation, that are to ensue. Even the paralysis of his intellect which closed the fretful scene seems almost to be at work already in the giddiness of which he so often complains. Swift would not have felt much flattered by the remark, and yet it is true, that there is a strong analogy between him at this period of his life and the political upholsterer immortalised in the lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. also a great haunter of the Park. The reader must consult the Tatler' for the "high argument" of this sage politician; and also for the profound dissertations of the "three or four very odd fellows sitting together upon the bench at the upper end of the Mall"—all of them "curiosities in their kind”– "politicians who used to sun themselves in that place every day about dinnertime."

I

Horace Walpole enjoyed and appreciated St. James's Park. It requires an indolent or a good-natured man to do the latter. Walpole, who was indolent, and Goldsmith (see the old philosopher leading his equally antiquated cousin along the Mall in his miscellaneous essays), who was good-natured, both appreciated it. Swift, who certainly was not good-natured, walked in it for his health; and Samuel Johnson, who was troubled with thick coming fancies in an incessantly working brain, sought to drown them in the roar of Fleet Street. To Horace Walpole's power of appreciating the Park we are indebted for a picture of a party of pleasure in the Mall, quite equal to Etherege's half a century before:— "1750. June 23. I had a card from Lady Caroline Petersham to go with her to Vauxhall. I went accordingly to her house, and found her with the little Ashe, or the Pollard Ashe as they call her. They had just finished their last layer of red, and looked as handsome as crimson could make them. *** We issued into the Mall to assemble our company, which was all the town, if we could get it; for just as many had been summoned, except Harry Vane, whom we met by chance. We mustered the Duke of Kingston, whom Lady Caroline says she has been trying for these seven years; but alas! his beauty is at the fall of the leaf; Lord March, Mr. Whithead, a pretty Miss Beauclerc, and a very foolish Miss Sparre. These two damsels were trusted by their mothers for the first time to the matronly care of Lady Caroline. As we sailed up the Mall, with all our colours flying, Lord Petersham, with his hose and legs twisted to every point of crossness, strode by us at the outside, and re-passed again on the return. At the end of the Mall she called him: he would not answer; she gave a familiar spring, and between laugh and confusion ran up to him, 'My lord, my lord, why you don't see us!' We advanced at a little distance, not a little awkward, in expectation how all this would end, for my lord never stirred his hat, or took the least notice of anybody; she said 'Do you go with us, or are you going anywhere else?' 'I don't go with you—I am going somewhere else;' and going somewhere else;' and away he stalked, as sulky as a ghost that nobody will speak to first. We got into the best order we could, and marched to our barge with a boat of French horns attending and little Ashe singing. We paraded some time up the river, and at last debarked at Whitehall."

A remarkable feature in the Park, and the feelings of its habitual visitants, from the time of Pepys to that of Horace Walpole, is the nonchalance with which the gay world considered the other classes of society as something the presence of which ought in no way to interfere with their amusements. The beaux and belles looked upon the wearers of fustian jackets as a kind of dogs and parrots, who might be there without breaking in on the strict privacy of the place. The tobacco-scented periwigs which disturbed the equanimity of Loveit and Sir Fopling, were worn by the rude fellows of their own rank: the upholsterer and his fellows were silent and submissive. But this equanimity was not to last. Only nine years after the free and easy scene described by Horace Walpole, we find him writing-and by a curious coincidence on the same day of the same month"My Lady Coventry and my niece Waldegrave have been mobbed in the Park: I am sorry the people of England take all their liberty out in insulting pretty women." Additional light is thrown upon this passage by an anecdote inserted in the chronicle department of the Annual Register' for 1759 :—

"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 appren tices 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