gardens which they had planted on the banks. of the river, the great river Euphrates; and, behold, there appeared on the sudden three men, sons of the giants; then Nebuchadnezzar, the King, lifted up his voice and cried: Oh, men of war, who be ye, who be ye? and is it peace?' But they answered him not. Then spake he, and said: "There is treachery, oh my Queen, there is treachery ;' and he turned his face and fled. Now when the Queen had seen what had befallen my Lord the King, she girt up her loins and fled also, crying, 'Oh, my God!' So the King and the Queen ran together; but the King outran her mightily; for he ran very swiftly, neither turned he to the right hand nor to the left, for he was sore afraid where no fear was, and fled when no man pursued."

The amount of the fact, we suppose, was, that the King and Queen saw the three mortal enemies of their minister coming, one day, up the walk; and the King, in his impatience, not choosing to await their salutations as they passed him, turned about: for Walpole at that time (it was in the year 1738), was in one of his most trying situations, and, not long afterwards, resigned.

We return to the pleasanter subject of the promenades. When the King and Queen appeared in them, their majesties may have been accompanied by a whole bevy of Princesses, their daughters. Their brother Frederick, Prince of Wales, would, however, be seldom there, difference between father and son being hereditary amongst the Georges. The Kensington Garden promenades were popular throughout the whole of the three

Georges' reigns, but flourished most, as far as names and fashions are concerned, in those of the first and second, beginning with the persons above mentioned and with the brocades and chintzes of Tickell's Poem, and terminating with the Miss Gunnings, Miss Chudleigh, Lady Townshend, Lord Chesterfield, Selwyn, Horace Walpole, and others. The space of time includes half a century; and Walpole, Lady Suffolk, Beau Nash, and Colley Cibber, lived through it all; the two last from a much earlier period, and Walpole into a much later one, down to the French Revolution. At the beginning of it, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, with the wits of the Kit-Cat club about her, may be considered as having been the reigning belle of the promenaders; to her, succeeded the Bellendens and Lepells, with the same wits grown

older; then came Lady Townshend, with the new wits, Horace Walpole, Selwyn, Hanbury Williams, and others; and then crowds were alternately drawn by the " Chudleigh" and the Miss Gunnings; the former, for the adventures related at the beginning of this work; the latter, for perfections of face and figure, which sometimes rendered the crush to get a sight of them positively dangerous. So, at least, it is said; and the reader may believe it, when he hears, that there seems to have been a contest among the nobility, who should obtain them for wives. They had no fortunes; but one married an earl, and the other two dukes in succession. Miss Chudleigh, also, as we have seen, had her earl and her duke. Both the Gunnings died young. One of them was the Countess of Coventry,

on whom Mason wrote some of his best

verses.

Yes, Coventry is dead. Attend the strain,
Daughters of Albion; ye, that light as air,
So oft have tripp'd in her fantastic train,
With hearts as gay, and faces half as fair.

Whene'er with soft serenity she smil❜d,

Or caught the orient blush of quick surprise,
How sweetly mutable, how brightly wild,
The liquid lustre darted from her eyes!

Mason, who was a bustling man, and became a court-chaplain, was probably often in the Gardens. Not so his friend Gray, whose habits were recluse, and who soon tired