While he played at Palle Malle here in his prosperity, James Duke of York must often have remembered his escape by this way in his fifteenth year, when, while all the young people in the palace were engaged late at night in playing at hide-and-seek, he slipped up to the room of his sister Elizabeth, shut up there the favourite little dog which was sure to have betrayed him, and gliding down the back stairs and through the dark garden, let himself out of a postern door into the Park, and so to the river.

It was by this road also that Charles I. (Jan. 30, 1648-9) walked to his execution.

"About 10 o'clock Colonel Hacker knocked at the King's chamber door (in St. James's Palace), and, having been admitted, came in trembling, and announced to the King that it was time to go to Whitehall; and soon afterwards the King, taking the Bishop (Juxon) by the hand, proposed to go. Charles then walked out through the garden of the palace into the Park, where several companies of foot waited as his guard; and, attended by the Bishop on one side, and Colonel Tomlinson on the other, both bare-headed, he walked fast down the Park, sometimes cheerfully calling on the guard to 'march apace.' As he went along, he said 'he now went to strive for a heavenly crown, with less solicitude than he had often encouraged his soldiers to fight for an earthly diadem.” ”—Trial of Charles I. Family Library, xxxi.

Till a very few years ago, when it was blown down, there existed in Sir John Lefevre's garden, at the corner of Spring Gardens, a tree, which the king on this his last walk lingered to point out, saying, "That tree was planted by my brother Henry." And there still remains, at this corner of the Park, a remnant of old days coeval with the king's execution, in Milk Fair, as the pretty cow-stalls which still exist under the elm-trees used to be called. The milkvendors are proud of the number of generations through which the stalls have been held in their families. We

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 men

tions 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

IN

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."