a liberal education; and they desired, and indeed had conspired so far to possess the queen herself, that she should neither learn the English language, nor use their habit, nor depart from the manners and fashions of her own country in any particulars." Although the Infanta herself was by no means ill-looking, her charms did not come up to those of the flattered portrait which her mother, the old Queen of Portugal, had sent to Charles; and it is possible that the selection of plain women for her retinue had been intentional, that their ugliness might serve as a foil to her moderate amount of beauty. After a short time, however, the majority of these uncomely Lusitanians were sent back to their native country. To return to Mr Smith and St James's Park. After his Restoration, Charles the Second, who, as worthy Thomas Blount says in his Boscobel, had been hunted to and fro like a "partridge upon the mountains," became very _casanier_, decidedly stay-at-home, in his habits, and cared little to absent himself from London and its vicinity. He had had buffeting and wandering enough in his youth, and, on ascending the throne of his unfortunate father, he thought of little besides making himself comfortable in his capital, careless of expense, which, even in his greatest need, he seems never to have calculated. He planted the avenues of the park, made a canal and an aviary for rare birds, which gave the name to Bird-Cage Walk. Amongst other freaks, and to provide for a witty Frenchman who amused him, he erected Duck Island into a government. Charles de St Denis, seigneur of St Evremond, who had been banished from France for a satire on Cardinal Mazarine, was the first and, it is believed, the last governor. He drew the salary attached to the appointment, which was certainly a more lucrative than honourable one for a man of his talents and reputation. According to Evelyn, Charles stored the park with "numerous flocks of fowle. There were also deer of several countries--white, spotted like leopards; antelopes, as elk, red deer, roebucks, staggs, Guinea grates, Arabian sheep," &c. In the Mall, also made by him, Charles played at ball and took his daily walk. "Here," says Colley Cibber, "Charles was often seen amid crowds of spectators, feeding his ducks and playing with his dogs, affable even with the meanest of his subjects." Mr Smith regrets the diminished affability and less accessible mood of sovereigns of the nineteenth century, although he admits that the populace of France and England are at the present day too rude for it to be advisable that kings and queens should walk amongst them with the easy familiarity of the second Charles. Of that there can be very little doubt. Even Charles, whose dislike of ceremony and restraint, and love of gossip and new faces, were cause, at least as much as any desire for popularity, that he thus mingled with the mob, occasionally experienced the disagreeables of his undignified manner of life.