friend Pepys will illustrate the passages respecting my Lady Castlemain and others.

"1660-Sept. 14.-To White Hall Chappell, where one Dr. Crofts made an indifferent sermon, and after it an anthem, ill sung, which made the King laugh. Here I first did see the Princesse Royall since she came into England. Here I also observed, how the Duke of York (James II.) and Mrs. Palmer (Lady Castlemaine) did talk to one another very wantonly through the hangings that part the king's closet, and the closet where the ladies sit.

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May 21.-My wife and I to Lord's lodgings, where she and I staid talking in White Hall Garden. And in the Privygarden saw the finest smocks and linnen petticoats of my Lady Castlemaine's, laced with rich lace at the bottom, that ever I saw; and did me good to look at them. Sarah told me how the King dined at my Lady Castlemaine's, and supped, every day and night the last week; and that the night that the bonfires were made for joy of the Queene's arrivall, the King was there; but there was no fire at her door, though at all the rest of the doors almost in the street; which was much observed and that the King and she did send for a pair of scales and weighed one another; and she being with child, was said to be heaviest. But she is now a most disconsolate creature, and comes not out of doors, since the King's going (to meet his wife).

as any

“August 23d.—Walked to White Hall, and through my Lord's lodgings we got into White Hall Garden, and so to the Bowling-greene, and up to the top of the new Banqueting House there, over the Thames, which was a most pleasant place I could have got; and all the show consisted chiefly in the number of boats and barges; and two pageants, one of a king, and the other a queene, with her maydes of honour sitting at her feet very prettily; and they tell me the queene is Sir Richard Ford's daughter. Anon come the King and Queene in a barge under a canopy with 1000 barges and boats I know, for they could see no water for them, nor discern the King nor Queene. And so they landed at White Hall Bridge, and the great guns on the other side went off. But that which

pleased me best was, that my Lady Castlemaine stood over against us upon a piece of White Hall. But methought it was strange to see her lord and her upon the same place walking up and down without taking notice one of another, only at first entry he put off his hat, and she made him a very civil salute, but afterward took no notice one of another; but both of them now and then would take their child, which the nurse held in her armes, and dandle it. One thing more; there happened a scaffold below to fall, and we feared much hurt, but there was none, but she of all the great ladies only run down among the common rabble to see what hurt was done, and did take care of a child that received some little hurt, which methought was so noble. Anon, there come one there booted and spurred that she talked long with, and by and by, she being in her haire, she put on his hat, which was but an ordinary one, to keep the wind off. But it become her mightily, as everything

else do."

What Pepys thought "noble" was probably nothing more than the consequence of a habit of doing what she pleased, in spite of appearances. The "hat" is a com

ment on it, to the same effect.

"November 25th.-Christmas Day.-Had a pleasant walk to White Hall, where I intended to have received the communion with the family, but I come a little too late. So I walked up into the house and spent my time looking over pictures, particularly the ships in King Henry the VIIIth's Voyage to Bullonn *, marking the great difference between those built then and now. By and by, down to the chapel again, where Bishop Morley preached upon the song of the angels, "Glory to God on high, on earth peace, and good-will towards men." Methought he made but a poor sermon, but long, and reprehending the common jollity of the court for the true joy that shall and ought to be on these days; particularized concerning their excess in playes and gaming, saying, that he whose office it is to keep the gamesters in order and within bounds, serves but for a second rather in a duell,

meaning the groome-porter. Upon which it was worth observing how far they are come from taking the reprehensions of a bishop seriously, that they all laugh in the chapel when he reflected on their ill actions and courses. He did much press

the bishop himself

us to joy in these publick days of joy, and to hospitality. But one that stood by whispered in my ear, that do not spend one groate to the poor himself. The sermon done, a good anthem followed with violls, and the King come down to receive the sacrament.

“1662—3—February 1st.-This day Creed and I walking in White Hall did see the King coming privately from my Lady Castlemaine's; which is a poor thing for a Prince to do: and so I expressed my sense of it to Creed in terms which I should not have done, but that I believe he is trusty in that point."

The court of James II. is hardly worth mention. It lasted less than four years, and was as dull as himself. The most remarkable circumstance attending it was the sight of friars and confessors, and the brief restoration of Popery. Waller, too, was once seen there; the fourth court of his visiting. There was a poetess also, who appears to have been attached by regard as well as office to the court of James-Anne Kingsmill, better known by her subsequent title of Countess of Winchilsea. The attachment was most probably one of feeling only and good-nature, for she had no bigotry of any sort. Dryden, furthermore, was laureate to King James; and in a fit of politic, perhaps real, regret, turned round upon the late court in his famous comparison of it with its prede

cessor.

James fled from England in December, 1688, and the history of Whitehall terminates with its conflagration, ten years afterwards.

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CHAP. XII.

- St.

St. James's Park and its Associations. - Unhealthiness of the Place and Neighbourhood. - Leper Hospital of St. James. - Henry the Eighth builds St. James's Palace and the Tilt Yard. - Original State and Progressive Character of the Park. - Charles the First. - Cromwell. - Charles the Second; his Walks, Amusements, and Mistresses. The Mulberry Gardens. Swift, Prior, Richardson, Beau Tibbs, Soldiers, and Syllabubs. Character of the Park at present. James's Palace during the Reigns of the Stuarts and two first Georges. -Anecdotes of Lord Craven and Prince George of Denmark. Characters of Queen Anne and of George the First and Second. - George the First and his Carp. - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Sack of Wheat. Horace Walpole's Portrait of George the First. - The Mistresses of that King, and of his Son.- Mistake of Lord Chesterfield. Queen Caroline's Ladies in Waiting. - Miss Bellenden and the Guineas. George the Second's Rupture with his Father, and with his Son. Character of that Son. Sheffield - Buckingham House. and his Duchess.- Character of Queen Charlotte.- Advantages of Queen Victoria over her predecessors.

T. JAMES'S PARK is associated in contemporary minds with nothing but amusing recollections of bands of music, marching soldiers, maid-servants and children, drinkings of "milk from the cow," the hoop-petticoats of the court-days of George

the Third, and fading images of

passages in novels, or of shabby-genteel debtors sitting lounging on the benches. A little further back in point of time we see a novelist himself, Richardson, walking in it, with other invalids, for his health; then Swift crossing it from Suffolk Street in his way to Chelsea, or thinking of the Spectator and Rosamond's Pond; then the gallants of the time of Charles the Second, with Charles himself

feeding his ducks and playing at mall; then his unhappy father led through it from St. James's Palace on his way to the scaffold at Whitehall; and then the chivalresque sports of the Tudors in the famous tilt-yard, which occupied the site of the Horse Guards. To all these points we shall return for the purpose of entering into a few particulars; but as geographers begin their accounts of a place with the soil, we shall first make a few remarks of a like nature.

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The site of this park, which must always have been low and wet, is said in the days before the Conquest to have been a swamp. Yet so little understood, not only at that time but at any time till within these few years, were those vitalest arts of life which have been disclosed to us by the Southwood Smiths and others, that the good citizens of London in those days built a hospital upon it for lepers (by way of purifying their skins), and people of rank and fashion have been clustering about it more and more ever since, especially of late years. "If a merry-meeting is to be wished," says the man in Shakspeare, "may God prohibit it." If our health is to be injured while in town by luxury and late nights, say the men of state and Parliament, let us all go and make it worse in the bad air of Belgravia. Nay, let us sit with our feet in the water, while in Parliament itself, and then let us aggravate our agues in Pimlico and the park.— There is no use in mincing the matter, even though the property of a great lord be doubled by the mistake. The fashionable world should have stuck to Marylebone and the good old dry parts of the metropolis, or gone up hill to Kensington gravel-pits, or into any other wholesome quarter of the town or suburbs, rather than have descended to the water-side, and built in the mush of Pimlico. Building and house-warming doubtless make a difference; and wealth has the usual advantages compared with