Except in the height of the season, men and women no longer dress smartly in the Park. The magnificent horses, high-steppers with well-arched necks and splendid paces, are rapidly being superseded by the motor-car. Instead of beautifully dressed ladies and smartly groomed men in silk hats and frock coats, sitting in carriages, women smothered in veils and hideous goggles, and men looking more like cut-throat villains than gentlemen, are seen dashing through the Park in motors. No more unbecoming attire was ever invented for men and women than the modern motor get-up. Ten weeks complete the great social event known as the London season. No sooner has July dawned than palms and canes, semi-tropical flowers and plants, appear upon the scene. Their pots are so cleverly planted that the date palm, the sugarcane, and the sweet corn of the Indies really look as if they were growing out of the grass itself, and convert Hyde Park into a semi-tropical botanical garden for a couple of months. Then station-omnibuses laden with babies and bundles begin to ply our streets, and day by day the crowd grows thinner in the Park. By August only foreigners with Baedekers are to be found where Society fluttered but a short time before. Then come autumn tints, winter fogs, and utter desolation. And thus from generation to generation Hyde Park has been the playground of London’s rich and poor, the wide theatre upon which their tragedies and comedies have been enacted, the forum in which many public liberties have been demanded, the scene where national triumphs have been celebrated. To write fully the history of a space so crowded with pregnant memories would be too great a task for any one pen, nor could a single book hope to hold one tithe of the interesting memories which throng these precincts; but I trust that the rapid survey given in the following pages, of some of the famous happenings and curious traditions connected with the place, may not be unwelcome to those who now adorn Hyde Park. CHAPTER II A ROYAL HUNTING-GROUND Hyde Park in its present guise is essentially modern. It preserves nothing of that old-world air which makes the lawn of Hampton Court and the formal gardens of Windsor Castle so delightful. Rotten Row as a tan ride has been laid out in the memory of people still living. The Marble Arch on its present site is Victorian. Burton’s Arch, and the screen at Hyde Park Corner, are but a little earlier. Queen Caroline, consort of George II., formed the Serpentine. Queen Anne planted avenues of stately elms. Charles I. made “The Ring,” though few now-a-days will identify the spot which for so long was the meeting-place of the fashion of the town. With all this the Park is very old, and as open land left to nature undisturbed, its history may be traced back in an unbroken record to the time when it was part of the wild forest that originally surrounded London.