ES'S PA THE LEPER HOSPITAL OF ST. JAMES'S. 433 and cause being unsuspected, the evil is endured, and no further ng into a l accounts remarks s ys have be quest to hum at that hose vi London ay of p on har houses." This statement, corroborated as it is by the obvious naturė of the soil and air in the park, where the people to any eye oming from higher ground seem walking about only in a hinner kind of water-a perpetual haze and mugginessught to settle the question respecting the doom of Buckingam Palace. Her Majesty, whose life and comfort are preious to her subjects, should have her town residence in quite nother sort of place. Almost everything indeed, artificial well as natural, conspires to render the spot unwholesome. ee what the royal lungs receive on all sides of the present spec bode whichever way the windows are opened. In front of is the steam of the mushy ground and the canal; on the ft comes draining down the wet of Constitution Hill; and the right and at the back are the vapours of the river and e pestilential smokes of the manufactories. What an air which to set forth the colours of the royal flag and efresh the anxieties of the owner! We never look down a the flag from Piccadilly, but we long to see it announcg the royal presence on higher ground and in a healthy Savs health & e it Our fe of reeze. The Leper Hospital, being the ancientest known domicile the spot before us, stood on the site of the present St. ames's Palace; so that where state and fashion have conregated, and blooming beauties come laughing through the ees, was once heard the dismal sound of the " cup and apper," which solicited charity for the most revolting of Fiseases. The spot was probably selected for the hospital, ot only as being at the greatest convenient distance from the abitations of the good citizens its founders (lepers being ways put as far as possible out of the way), but because it ggested itself to the imagination as possessed of an analoous dreariness and squalidity. Unfavourable circumstances those days were only thought fit for one another, not for F F 1 434 THE LEPER HOSPITAL OF ST. JAMES'S. the super-induction of favourable ones. The lunatic was t be exasperated by whips and dark-keeping, and the leper thrust into the ditch. The world had not yet found out that light, cleanliness, and consolation were good for all. Imagin this "lake of the dismal swamp," now St. James's Park, with not another house nearer to it than the walls at Ludgate presenting to the timid eyes of the Sunday pedestrian it lonely spital, which at once attracted his charity and repelle his presence (for leprosy was thought infectious), the wind sighing through the trees, and the rain mingling with the pestilential-looking mud. The endowment of St. James's Hospital is said to have been originally for women only, fourteen in number, t whom were subsequently added eight brethren " to administer divine service." They were probably, however, in a goo condition of life-" leper ladies," as an old poem styles the companions of Cressida; but ladies, according to the poem. were not exempt from the duty of asking alms with the " cup and clapper;" and as it was probably a part of their busines and humiliation to watch for the appearance of wayfarers and accost them with cries and clamour, scenes of tha kind may have taken place in the walk now constituting the Mall. of The hospital was exchanged with Henry the Eighth for a consideration;" and upon its site, or near it, that soul o leprosy built a manor, and transferred into it his own bloated and corrupted body. He was then in the forty-third year his age, and in the same year (1532) he married poor Anne Boleyn. The town-residences (as they would now be called of the kings of England had hitherto been at Kensington or on the banks of the Thames at London and Westminste: | (such as the Tower, Westminster Hall, &c.) What it was that attracted Henry to the Leper Hospital it is difficult to conceive; though the neighbourhood, no doubt, had become a little cleansed and refined by the growth of Westminster and Whitehall. Much neatness was not required by a state of manners, which, according to Erasmus, must have been one of the dirtiest in Europe, and which allowed the refuse of meats and drinks, in gentlemen's houses, to collect under the rushes in the dining-rooms. Perhaps the new palace was to be a place of retirement for the King and his thoughtless victim, whom four years afterwards he put to death. Most likely, however, his great object was to grasp all he could and add to the number of his parks and amusements; for the whole of the St. James's Fields (as they were called) fell into his hands with the house, and he stocked them with game, built a tilt-yard in front of Whitehall, on the site of the present Horse Guards, together with a cock-pit in its neighbourhood; and on the downfall of Wolsey took possession of Whitehall itself, which thenceforth became added to the list of royal abodes. The new palace could never have been handsome. It had the homely look which it retains to this day, as the reader will see in the print before him; the gateway looking up St. James's Street being evidently a remnant of it. Here The Tilt Yard, as its name implies, was the chief scene of knightly amusement in the reigns of the Tudors. Henry jousted till he grew too fat; and here Elizabeth sat at the receipt of chivalrous adulation. The spot is full of life and colour in the eyes of one's imagination, with heralds and coats of arms, plumed champions, caparisoned steeds, and courts looking on from draperied galleries. The present tranquil exercises on parade may be considered as a remnant of the old military shows. But the people had no admittance within the court grounds, except on favour. The new park seems to have remained strictly enclosed as a nursery for game till the period of the civil wars of the Commonwealth. A new palace by Inigo Jones was intended to overlook it at Whitehall, of which only the Banqueting House was erected. Charles the First was brought to this house across the Park, from St. James's Palace, in order to suffer death. Cromwell is then discerned in the park grounds taking the air in a sedan; but its popular history does not cnmmence till the Restoration, when Charles the Second, who seems not to have known what to do with the quantity of life and animal spirits that had been suppressed during his exile, took to improving and enjoying it with great vivacity. The walks with him became real walks, for he was a great pedestrian. He had got the habit, perhaps, when he could not afford a horse. He let the people in to see him feed his ducks in the canal, a branch of which, called Duck Island, he pleasantly erected into a "Government" for the French wit and refugee, St. Evremond. He made an aviary on the south-east side of the park, thence called Birdcage Walk; turned the north side into a mall for the enjoyment of the pastimes so called, in which he excelled; introduced skating from Holland on the canal and Rosamond's Pond (which was another branch of it on the south-west); had mistresses in lodgings east and west of him (Cleveland at Whitehall and Nell Gwyn in Pall Mall); and saw, in the course of his reign, new streets rising and old places of entertainment flourishing in other quarters of his favourite district; Spring Gardens (which became famous for the tavern called "Lockett's "), at Charing Cross, and the Mulberry Gardens and noblemen's mansions between Pimlico and Piccadilly. It has been a question whether the site of the Mulberry Gardens was on the spot now occupied by Arlington Street, or on that of the Queen's Palace. We suspect it is difficult to say which, and that they extended along the whole space between the two. Particular sites are too often confounded with places near them; and houses are said to displace one another, which only occupied successive neighbourhoods. By some writers, for instance, the sites of Arlington and Old Buckingham Houses are considered as identical, while others represent them in one another's vicinity. At all events, the Mulberry Gardens appear to have included the site of both those houses. Ladies came there in masks to eat syllabubs, and converse with their lovers. Sedley made them the scene of a play. The whole park, indeed, in Charles's reign, may be said to have been the scene of a play, especially towards evening, when the meetings took place which Sedley and Etherege dramatised. In the morning all was duck-feeding and dog-playing and playing at mall; in the evening all intrigue and assignation. At one time Waller is admiring the King's masterly use of the small ST. JAMES'S PARK AND ITS RECREATIONS. 437 stick; at another Pepys is asking questions of the park-keepers, or transported at sight of the court ladies on horseback; at another Evelyn is horrified (though he seems to have sought occasions for such horrors) at overhearing a 66 very familiar discourse" between his Majesty and that "impudent comedian," Nelly Gwyn, who is standing at her garden-wall at the back of Pall Mall (near the present Marlborough House). Matters in this respect mended, though not suddenly, at the Revolution.. Whitehall Palace was then accidentally burnt down, and that of St. James's becomes one of the chief residences of the sovereign, which it remains till the reign of the present. Swift and Prior are now seen walking for their health in the park,-Swift to get thin, and Prior to get fat. The heroes and hungry debtors of the novelists (for the park was privileged from arrest) make their appearance, the former with their wives or friends, the latter sitting starving on the benches. Staid ladies have Sunday promenades under the eye of staid sovereigns. Something of a new license returns with the first and second Georges; but it comes from Germany, is discreet, and makes little impression. The greatest assignation we read of is an innocent one of Richardson with a Lady Bradshaigh, who is "mighty curious" to know what sort of man he is, and accordingly moves him to describe himself in the formal terms of an advertisement, in order that he may be recognised when she meets him. Goldsmith's Beau Tibbs, who "blasts himself with an air of vivacity" at seeing "nobody in town," is now the pleasantest fellow we encounter in the park for many a day. The ducks, and the dogs, and the birdcages, and Rosamond's Pond, dismal for drowning lovers, have long vanished; and the place begins to look as it used to do forty years ago. The gayest entertainment in it is "the soldiers," with their bands of music; and the most sensual pleasure a glass of milk from the cow. A mad woman (Margaret Nicholson) makes a sensation, by attempting to stab George the Third at the palace door; but all is quiet again, sedate and orderly, even when court-days bring together a crowd of beauties. George the Fourth just lives long enough to turn Buckingham Palace into a toy, and the site of Carlton Gardens into something better. With his successors comes the greatest of all the park improvements→→→ the conversion of the poor fields and canal into a public pleasure-ground and an ornamental piece of water. Upon this King Charles's ducks have returned, equally improved; |