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enough of wine; had a ball or a concert, where he devoted himself to Lady Castlemain, the Duchess of Portsmouth, or whoever the reigning lady was, the Queen talking all the while as fast as she could to some other lady; then, perhaps, played at riddles, or joked with Buckingham and Killigrew, or talked of the intrigues of the court the great topic of the day. Sometimes the ladies rode out with him in the morning, perhaps in men's hats and feathers; sometimes they went to the play, where the favourite was jealous of the actresses; sometimes an actress is introduced at court and becomes a "madam" herself-Madam Davis, or Madam Eleanor Gwyn. Sometimes the Queen treats them with a cup of the precious and unpurchasable beverage called tea, or even ventures abroad with them in a frolicsome disguise. Sometimes the courtiers are at Hampton, playing at hide-and-seek in a labyrinth; sometimes at Windsor, the ladies sitting halfdressed for Sir Peter Lely's voluptuous portraits.

Lady Castlemain, the Duchess of Portsmouth, and Nell Gwyn, all have their respective lodgings in Whitehall, looking out upon gardens, elegant with balconies and trellises. By degrees the little dukes grow bigger, and there is in particular a great romping boy, very handsome, called Master Crofts, afterwards Duke of Monmouth, who is the protégé of Lady Castlemain, though his mother was Mrs. Walters, and who takes the most unimaginable liberties in all quarters. He annoys exceedingly the solemn Duke of York, the King's brother, who heavily imitates the reigning gallantries, stupidly following some lady about without uttering a word, and who afterwards cut off the said young gentleman's head. The concerts are French, partly got up by St. Evremond and the Duchess of Mazarin, who come to hear them; and there, in addition to the ladies before mentioned, come also the Duchess of Buckingham, short and thick, (daughter of the old Parliamentary general, Fairfax,) and Lady Ossory, charming and modest, and the Countess of Shrewsbury, who was neither, and Lady Falmouth, with eyes at which Lord Dorset never ceased to look, and the Duchess of York (Clarendon's daughter), eating something, and divine old Lady Fanshawe, who crept out of the cabin in a sea-fight to stand by her husband's side. The Queen has brought her there, grateful for a new set of sarabands, at which Mr. Waller is expressing his rapture-Waller, the visitor of three courts, and admired and despised in them all. Behind him stands Dryden, with a

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quiet and somewhat down-looking face, finishing a couplet of satire. "Handsome Sydney" is among the ladies; and so is Ralph Montague, who loved ugly dogs because nobody else would; and Harry Jermyn, who got before all the gallants, because he was in earnest. Rochester, thin and flushed, is laughing in a corner at Charles's grim looks of fatigue and exhaustion; Clarendon is vainly flattering himself that he is diverting the king's ennui with a long story; Grammont is shrugging his shoulders at not being able to get in a word; and Buckingham is making Sedley and Etherege ready to die of laughter by his mimicry of the poor Chancellor.

The following delicate morceaux from the pages of our » friend Pepys will illustrate the passages respecting my Lady

1

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 Privy-garden 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 arrival, 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).

August 23d.-Walked to White Hall, and through my Lord's lodgings we got into White Hall Garden, and so to the Bowlinggreene, and up to the top of the new Banqueting House there, over the Thames, which was a most pleasant place as any 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 1,000 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 w 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

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made him a very civil salute, but afterwards 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 comment on it, to the

same effect.

"December 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 us to joy in these publick days of joy, and to hospitality. But one that stood by whispered in my ear that the bishop himself 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 * Boulogne,

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 pre: decessor.

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

CHAPTER XII.

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.-St. 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.-Buckingham House.-Sheffield 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 shabbygenteel 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

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UNHEALTHY SITE OF ST. JAMES'S PARK.

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 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 t 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 poverty: but the malaria is not done away. A professional authority on the subject gave the warning five and twenty years ago in the Edinburgh Review; but what are warnings to house-building and fashion? "It is not suspected," he says (vol. xxxvi. p. 341) "that St. James's Park is a perpetual source of malaria, producing frequent intermittents, autumnal dysenteries, and various derangements of health, in all the inhabitants who are subject to its influence.

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