of Charles II. to Hamilton, ranger of the park, and Birch, auditor of excise, to be walled and planted with " pippins and red-streaks," on condition of their furnishing apples or cider for the King's use. The alcove at the end of the avenue leading from the south front of the palace to the wall on the Kensington road was also built by Anne's orders. So that Kensington Palace in her reign seems to have stood in the midst of fruit and pleasure gardens, with pleasant alcoves on the west and south, and a stately banqueting-house on the east-the whole confined between the Kensington and Uxbridge roads, the west side of Palace Green, and the line of the broad walk before the east front of the palace. Tickell has perpetrated a dreary mythological poem on Kensington Gardens, which we have ransacked in vain for some descriptive touches of their appearance in Queen Anne's time, and have therefore been obliged to have recourse to Addison's prose in the 477th Number of the Spectator:-" I think there are as many kinds of gardening as poetry: your makers of pastures and flower gardens are epigrammatists and sonnetteers in this art; contrivers of bowers and grottoes, treillages and cascades, are romance writers. Wise and Loudon are our heroic poets; and if as a critic I may single out any passage of their works to commend, I shall take notice of that part in the upper garden at Kensington, which was at first nothing but a gravel-pit. It must have been a fine genius for gardening that could have thought of forming such an unsightly hollow into so beautiful an area, and to have hit the eye with so uncommon and agreeable a scene as that which it is now wrought into. To give this particular spot of ground the greater effect, they have made a very pleasing contrast; for as on one side of the walk you see this hollow basin, with its several little plantations lying so conveniently under the eye of the beholder, on the other side of it there appears a seeming mount, made up of trees one higher than another as they approach the centre. A spec tator who has not heard of this account of it, would think this circular mount was not only a real one, but that it had been actually scooped out of that hollow space, which I have before mentioned. I never yet met with any one who had walked in this garden who was not struck with that part of it which I have mentioned."

In reference to the operations of Queen Caroline, Daines Barrington remarks, in his Essay on the Progress of Gardening :'—" It is believed that George I. rather improved the gardens at Herrnhausen than those of any of his English palaces. In the succeeding reign, Queen Caroline threw a string of ponds in Hyde Park into one, so as to form what is called the Serpentine River, from its being not exactly straight, as all ponds and canals were before. She is likewise well known to have planted and laid out the gardens of Richmond and Kensington upon a larger scale, and in better taste, than we have any instances before that period. She seems also to have been the first introducer of expensive buildings in gardens, if one at Lord Barrington's is excepted." And yet Queen Anne's Green-house or Conservatory in the very gardens he was writing about must have cost something. Nearly 300 acres were added by Queen Caroline to Kensington Gardens. Opposite the Ring in Hyde Park a mound was thrown across the valley to dam up the streams connecting the chain of "pools" already mentioned. All the waters and conduits in the park, granted in 1663 to Thomas Haines on a lease of ninety-nine years, were re-purchased by the Crown. Along the line of the ponds a canal was begun to be dug. The excavation was four

nundred yards in length and forty feet deep, and cost 60007. At the south-east end of the gardens a mount was raised of the soil dug out of the canal. On the north and south the grounds, of which these works formed the characteristic features, were bounded by high parallel walls. On the north-east a fosse and low wall, reaching from the Uxbridge road to the Serpentine, at once shut in the gardens, and conducted the eye along their central vista, over the Serpentine to its extremity, and across the park. To the east of Queen Anne's gardens, immediately below the principal windows of the east front of the palace, a reservoir was formed into a circular pond, and thence long vistas were carried through the woods that circled it round, to the head of the Serpentine; to the fosse and low wall, affording a view of the park (this sort of fence was an invention of Bridgeman, "an attempt then deemed so astonishing, that the common people called them Ha-has, to express their surprise at finding a sudden and unperceived check to their walk"), and to the mount constructed out of the soil dug from the canal. This mount was planted with evergreens, and on the summit was erected a small temple, made to turn at pleasure, to afford shelter from the wind. The three principal vistas were crossed at right angles, by others at regular intervals-an arrangement which has been complained of as disagreeably formal, with great injustice, for the formality is only in the ground plot, not in any view of the garden that can meet the eye of the spectator at one time. Queen Anne's gardens underwent no further alteration than was necessary to make them harmonise with the extended grounds, of which they had now become a part.

Since the death of George II. Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens have undergone no changes of consequence. The Ring, in the former, has been

deserted for the drive, and presents now an appearance which any Jonathan Oldbuck might pardonably mistake for the vestiges of a Roman encampment. New plantations have been laid out to compensate for the gradual decay of the old wood. That part of the south wall of Kensington Gardens which served to intercept between it and the Kensington road a narrow strip of the park where the cavalry barracks have been erected, has been thrown down. Queen Caroline's

artificial mound had previously been levelled. A new bridge has been thrown across the Serpentine, and more ornamental buildings been erected on its bank to serve for a powder-magazine and the house of the Humane Society, (beautiful antithesis!) and infantry barracks have been erected within the precincts of the park near Knightsbridge.

Kensington Gardens now occupy the Gravel-pit division and the larger portions of the Kensington and Middle divisions of the time of Oliver Cromwell. Farther along the Serpentine, and below the waterless waterfall, at its termination, the appearance of the park has been wonderfully changed since the time of the Protectorate. The remainder is characterised, perhaps, by a more careful surface-dressing, but in other respects it has, if anything, retrograded in internal ornament. Of the Ring, once the seat of gaiety and splendour, we may say with Wordsworth, that

it seems

"Dying insensibly away

From human thoughts and purposes,"

"To yield to some transforming power,
And blend with the surrounding trees."

We sometimes feel tempted to regret its decay, and also the throwing down of part of the south wall of the gardens, which seems to have let in too much sunlight upon them (to say nothing of east winds), and spoiled their umbrageous character. On the whole, however, the recent changes in Hyde Park are more striking in regard to its immediate vicinity, to the setting of the jewel as it were, than to the ground itself. Any one who enters the park from Grosvenor Gate (opened in 1724) and advances to the site of the Ring, will at once feel this change in its full force. Hemmed in though the park now is on all sides by long rows of buildings, one feels there, on a breezy upland with a wide space of empty atmosphere on every side, what must have been the charm of this place when the eye, looking from it, fell in every direction on rural scenes. For Hyde Park until very recently was entirely in the country. And this remark naturally conducts us to those adventures and incidents associated with Hyde Park which contribute even more than its rural position to render it less exclusively of the court, courtly, than St. James's.

Hyde Park was a favourite place of resort for those who brought in the 1st of May with the reverence once paid to it. Pepys breathes a sigh in his 'Diary' on the evening of the 30th April, 1661, (he was then on a pleasure jaunt,) to this effect :-" I am sorry I am not at London to be at Hide Park to-morrow morning, among the great gallants and ladies, which will be very fine." fine." It was very

fine, for Evelyn has entered in his Diary,' under the date of the identical 1st of May referred to by Pepys :-"I went to Hide Park to take the air, where was his Majesty and an innumerable appearance of gallants and rich coaches, being now at time of universal festivity and joy." But even during the sway of the Puritans, the Londoners assembled here "to do observance to May," as we learn from 'Several Proceedings of State Affairs, 27th April to 4th May, 1654.'"Monday, 1st May. This day was more observed by people going a maying than for divers years past, and indeed much sin committed by wicked meetings with fiddlers, drunkenness, ribaldry, and the like; great resort came to Hyde Park, many hundreds of coaches and gallants in attire, but most shameful pow

dered hair men, and painted and spotted women. Some men played with a silver ball, and some took other recreation. But his Highness the Lord Protector went not thither, nor any of the Lords of the Commonwealth, but were busy about the great affairs of the Commonwealth." We would give a trifle to know whether one John Milton, a Secretary of the Lord Protector, were equally self-denying. In 1654 the morning view from the Ring in Hyde Park must have been not unlike this description of what had met a poet's eyes in his early rambles

"Some time walking not unseen

By hedge-row elms on hillock green,
Right against the eastern gate
Where the great sun begins his state,
Robed in flames and amber light
The clouds in thousand liveries dight,
While the ploughman near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrowed land;
And the milk-maid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale."

And one of the poet's earlier compositions had afforded a strong suspicion of his idolatrous tendencies

"Now the bright morning-star, day's harbinger,

Comes dancing from the east, and brings with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail! beauteous May, that doth inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire;
Meads and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long."

To all which circumstances may be added that the said John Milton is affirmed (perhaps with a view to be near the scene of his official duties) to have resided for some time in a house on the south side of St. James's Park, at no immeasurable distance from the place where the enormities of May worship were perpetrated in 1654, under the very noses of a puritanical government.

Be this as it may, the sports affected by the habitual frequenters of Hyde Park at all times of the year had a manly character about them, harmonizing with its country situation. For example, although the Lord Protector felt it inconsistent with his dignity to sanction by his presence the profane mummery of the 1st of May, he made himself amends for his self-denial a few days afterwards, as we learn from the Moderate Intelligencer:"-" Hyde Park, May 1st, 1654. This day there was a hurling of a great ball by fifty Cornish gentlemen of the side, and fifty on the other; one party played in red caps, and the other in white. There was present his Highness the Lord Protector, many of his Privy Council, and divers eminent gentlemen, to whose view was presented great agility of body, and most neat and exquisite wrestling, at every meeting of one with the other, which was ordered with such dexterity, that it was to show more the strength, vigour, and nimbleness of their bodies than to endanger their persons. The ball they played withal was silver, and designed for that party which did win the goal." Evelyn mentions in May 1658, "I went to see a coach-race in Hide

Park, and collationed in Spring Gardens." Pepys mentions in August, 1660:"To Hide Parke by coach, and saw a fine foot-race three times round the park (Qu. Ring?) between an Irishman and Crow that was once my Lord Claypole's footman." Evelyn's coach-race (by which we must not understand such a race as might take place now-a-days between two professional or amateur coach-drivers, but more probably some imaginative emulation of classical chariot-races, for such was the tone of that age) recalls an accident which happened to Cromwell in Hyde Park in 1654. We learn from the 'Weekly Post,'-"His Highness the Lord Protector went lately in his coach from Whitehall to take the ayr in Hide Park; and the horses being exceedingly affrighted, set a running, insomuch that the postilion fell, whereby his Highness was in some danger; but (blessed be God) he was little hurt." Ludlow's version of this story is :-"The Duke of Holstein made him (Cromwell) a present of a set of grey Friesland coach-horses; with which taking the air in the park, attended only with his secretary Thurloe, and a guard of Janizaries, he would needs take the place of the coachman, not doubting but the three pair of horses he was about to drive would prove as tame as the three nations which were ridden by him; and therefore, not content with their ordinary pace, he lashed them very furiously. But they, unaccustomed to such a rough driver, ran away in a rage, and stopped not till they had thrown him out of the box, with which fall his pistol fired in his pocket, though without any hurt to himself: by which he might have been instructed how dangerous it was to meddle with those things wherein he had no experience." There may be some truth in this, although Ludlow was a small man, virulent in his vindictiveness, and a gobemouche; for the cautious journalist admits that the Protector was hurt; and Bates, Cromwell's physician, mentions that, from an idea that violent motion was calculated to alleviate some disorders to which he was subject, it was his custom when taking the air in his coach to seat himself on the driving-box, in order to procure a rougher shake. Cromwell-since we have got him in hand we may as well despatch him at once-seems to have been partial to Hyde Park and its environs. The Weekly Post,' enumerating the occasions on which Syndercombe and Cecill had lain in wait to assassinate him in Hyde Park (“the hinges of Hide Park gate were filed off in order to their escape") enumerates some of his airings all in this neighbourhood :—" when he rode to Kensington and thence the back way to London ;" "when he went to Hide Park in his coach;" "when he went to Turnham Green and so by Acton home;" and "when he rode in Hide Park." One could fancy him influenced by some attractive sympathy between his affections and the spot of earth in which he was destined to repose from his stirring and harassing career. The unmanly indignities offered to his dead body harmed not him, and they who degraded themselves by insulting the dead were but a sort of sextons more hardened and brutal than are ordinarily to be met with. Cromwell sleeps as sound at Tyburn, in the vicinity of his favourite haunts, as the rest of our English monarchs sleep at Westminster or Windsor.

The fashionable part of Hyde Park was long confined within very narrow limits; the Ring being, from all time previous to the Restoration till far in the reigns of the Georges, the exclusive haunt of the beau monde. Subsequently Kensington Gardens, at the opposite extremity of the park, was appropriated by the race that lives for enjoyment; but even after that event a considerable space within the park remained allotted to the rougher business of life. During the time of