The best part of the political and social life of this small London was practically lived in the still smaller area of St. James's, a term which generally includes rather more than is contained within the strict limits of St. James's parish. If some Jacobite gentleman or loyal Hanoverian courtier of the year 1714 could revisit to-day the scenes in which he schemed and quarrelled, he would find himself among the familiar names of strangely unfamiliar places. St. James's Park indeed has not altered out of all recognition since the days when Duke Belair and my Lady Betty and my Lady Rattle walked the Mall between the hours of twelve and two, and quoted from Congreve about laughing at the great world and the small. There were avenues of trees then as now. Instead of the ornamental water ran a long canal, populous with ducks, which joined a pond called--no one knows why--Rosamund's Pond. This pond was a favorite trysting-place for happy lovers--"the sylvan deities and rural {66} powers of the place, sacred and inviolable to love, often heard lovers' vows repeated by its streams and echoes"--and a convenient water for unhappy lovers to drown themselves in, if we may credit the _Tatler_. St. James's Palace and Marlborough House on its right are scarcely changed; but to the left only Lord Godolphin's house lay between it and the pleasant park where the deer wandered. Farther off, where Buckingham Palace now is, was Buckingham House. It was then a stately country mansion on the road to Chelsea, with semicircular wings and a sweep of iron railings enclosing a spacious court, where a fountain played round a Triton driving his sea-horses. On the roof stood statues of Mercury, Liberty, Secrecy, and Equity, and across the front ran an inscription in great gold letters, "_Sic Siti Laetantur Lares_." The household gods might well delight in so fair a spot and in the music of that "little wilderness full of blackbirds and nightingales," which the bowl-playing Duke who built the house lovingly describes to his friend Shrewsbury. [Sidenote: 1714--Old London]