People have returned to town. The hunting is over; the Riviera has ceased to attract. Egypt is too hot. The Academy and Opera are open, and the London Season has begun. Certain hours are given up to certain things, and the first occupants of the Park in the early morning are the members of the _Liver Brigade_. As a child at the age of seven, and for ten years after that, I rode with my father every morning at half-past seven in Rotten Row, returning to breakfast, to change my habit, and go to school; and for nearly ten years more I did the same with my husband, going—instead of to school, on my return—to the kitchen to order the dinner. My acquaintance with Hyde Park is, therefore, not imaginary, but real—very real. The Liver Brigade in the Park is a regular London institution. Judges, barristers, surgeons, physicians, actors, writers, African millionaires, and German Jews all ride in the morning between half-past seven and ten o’clock. Many of them are known to each other, consequently friendly greetings and pleasant chats are exchanged while the Liver Brigade take exercise, knowing well that on their return home to bath and breakfast they will have to settle down to the Law Courts, Chambers, or the Consulting-room for the rest of the day. That hour’s ride in the morning has been the salvation of many a brain-weary man and woman. In the eighties and nineties the people dressed most smartly. I well remember my tight-fitting habit and tall silk hat, my white stock in winter, or high collar and white tie in summer. The menfolk wore silk hats and black hunting coats, smart breeches and high patent boots. All this is changed; a go-as-you-please air has overtaken the riders. The women wear loose coats with sack backs, cotton shirts, sailor hats, billycocks—anything and everything that brings comfort, even if it deprives them of grace. The men don caps and tweeds, brown boots and putties, in fact, any rough-and-tumble country kit. No sooner has the Liver Brigade departed than the Park is given over to the babies and nurses. In the summer these women are entirely dressed in white piqué, and in winter in grey cloth or flannel. There are literally hundreds—one might say thousands—of nurses and aristocratic babies disporting themselves every day in Hyde Park. The infants go home fairly early to their midday sleep, at which hour the governesses and bigger children, having accomplished their morning’s work, come out to the Park, which by twelve o’clock is given over to older childhood. These are the regular habitués, but there are others who are constant visitors to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. There are men and women who, year in year out, come daily with their little bags of crumbs to feed the birds,—people who are followed by whole flocks of sparrows and pigeons, or, nearer the Serpentine, by ducks and swans.