learn from Gay's "Trivia" that asses' milk was formerly sold here

"Before proud gates attending asses bray,
Or arrogate with solemn pace the way;

These grave physicians with their milky cheer,
The love-sick maid and dwindling beau repair."

The houses behind Milk Fair stand in Spring Gardens, the Spring (Fountain) Garden of Whitehall Palace, which

formerly had its archery butts, bathing pond, and bowlinggreen. Milton lived in a house at Charing Cross which "overlooked the Spring Garden" before he went to reside in Scotland Yard.

Upon the east end of the Park-on the site formerly occupied by the vast buildings of Whitehall-the Admiralty, the Horse Guards, the Treasury, and the Foreign Office now look down. The wide open space in front of the Horse

Guards was once the Tilt Yard of the palace. The centre of this space is the only position in London in which the Alexandrian Obelisk could be placed with advantage. Here stands the mortar cast at Seville for Napoleon, used by Soult at Cadiz, and captured after the retreat of Sala

manca.

The south side of the Park is bounded by Bird Cage

Walk, where an aviary was first erected by James I. In the time of Charles II., who had a passion for birds, it was lined with cages, and the "Keeper of the King's Birds" was a regular office. Till as late as 1828 no one, except the Duke of St. Alban's, as Hereditary Grand Falconer, was permitted to drive down the carriage way on this side the Park, except the royal family.

In former days the Park gave sanctuary. Timbs mentions how serious an offence it was to draw a sword there. Congreve in his Old Bachelor makes Bluffe say, "My blood rises at that fellow. I can't stay where he is; and I must not draw in the Park." The Park has been open to the public ever since the days of Charles II. Caroline, wife of George II., wished to make it once more a private appurtenance of the palace, and asked Sir Robert Walpole what it would cost. "Only three crowns," was his reply.*

• Walpoliana, i. 9.

CHAPTER III.

REGENT STREET AND REGENT'S PARK.

N front of the Duke of York's Column, where the ridiculous statue, nicknamed the "Quoit Player," disgraces Waterloo Place, Regent Street leads to the north from Pall Mall. Nearly a mile in length, it was built by John Nash, and takes its name from the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV. The portion known as the Quadrant originally had colonnades advancing the whole width of the pavement: these were removed in 1848, to the great injury of its effect.

[From Regent Circus, Coventry Street (on the right) leads into Leicester Square. Great Windmill Street, to the north, commemorates the rural state of this district as late as 1658, when a windmill here gave its name to the "Windmill Fields." Nollekens the sculptor, who died in 1823, narrates that when he was a little boy his mother used to take him to walk by a long pond near this windmill, and every one paid a halfpenny at the miller's hatch for the privilege of walking in his grounds. In the house of his brother William in Great Windmill Street, the famous Dr. John Hunter died saying, "If I had strength enough to hold a pen, I would write how easy and pleasant a thing it is to die."

Ever since the Edict of Nantes, when exiled gentility began to congregate here, as exiled industry in Spitalfields, Leicester Square has been the most popular resort of foreigners of the middle classes, especially of French visitors to London. Few spots in the metropolis have undergone more changes from fashion than this. Even to the present century the square was known as "Leicester Fields," and until the time of Charles II. it continued to be unenclosed country. On what is the north side of the square, Leicester House, which appears in Faithorne's map of 1658 as the only house in this neighbourhood, was then built for Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester,* from whom it was rented by Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia-" the Queen of Hearts "-who died there Feb. 13, 1662. To this house, in 1668, Pepys went to visit Colbert, the French Ambassador; and here Prince Eugene was residing in 1711. The house continued to be the property of the Sidneys till the end of the last century, when it was sold to the Tulk family for £90,000, which sum the Sidneys em ployed in freeing Penshurst from its encumbrances. Meantime, the Sidneys had not lived here, and Leicester House had become habitually "the pouting-place of princes."† George II. resided there as Prince of Wales from 1717 to 1720, after he had been turned out of St. James's by his father, for too freely exhibiting his indignation at the cruel treatment of his mother, Sophia Dorothea, condemned to a lifelong imprisonment in the castle of Zell. William, Duke of Cumberland, the hero of Culloden, was born there in 1721. Frederick, Prince of Wales, when he, in his Sidney Alley still exists. Queen Street, Blue Street, and Orange Street record the distinguishing colours of the Earl's stables.

† Pennant.