Indeed, if one allows one’s imagination to run riot, there are even now spots in Hyde Park which lend themselves for the “setting” of such meetings. Strolling on a November afternoon near the site of the Ring, my thoughts wandering back through the centuries, I came to a grassy slope facing a group of silver birch trees. Their beautiful forms stood in bold relief against a background of dark shrubs. The setting sun—a red ball of fire—gave the haze, that adds so much to the picturesqueness of London, a hue that might have been the glow of a ruddy sunrise. Raindrops of yesterday glittered on the grass like dew. The sound of a distant carriage, and the little scene became peopled with creatures of the imagination,—two figures, chatting lightly and strolling to and fro among the trees; two others, pacing out a length, talking gravely meanwhile, and then examining some small objects in their hands. And soon all was ready. Their companions were summoned, and took their stand, exchanging coats for pistols. I felt like the heroine in an old novel who has surprised _une affaire d’honneur_, and—expecting each second to hear the shot—was ready to turn and flee with a thrill of horror, when the homely voices of the wild fowl on the Serpentine brought me back to reality and the twentieth century. The fields behind Montague House (the present British Museum) especially that known as “The Field of the Forty Footsteps,” Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Covent Garden, Pall Mall, Bayswater Fields, Wimbledon Common, Putney Heath, Battersea Fields, have all had the reputation of duelling grounds, and as late as 1783 the open space behind the Foundling Hospital was chosen for an affray. But it was a common thing for disputants merely to turn out into the street, draw their swords, and settle the matter there and then. In fact, in the reigns of George I. and George II. a small difference in a tavern assembly, a sudden flash of jealousy, were not even taken to the street, but were quickly fought out in the house. Such was the case later between Lord Byron and Mr. Chaworth, who fought with swords at the “Star and Garter” in Pall Mall; while Brinsley Sheridan and Captain Matthews planned to fight in Hyde Park, but found too many people about, so they retired to the Castle Tavern in Covent Garden. In such combats people expended their sudden fits of passion, their long pent-up hatred, or their bitter jealousy, and often a pet malice. Contempt of death had a capable nurse in the ghastly Tyburn exhibitions. Nor was it with one class of Society, nor with full-grown, responsible men alone that this mania (for it can be called nothing less) existed. It spread to mere boys, who called each other out for the slightest cause, in imitation of their elders—a danger which the twentieth-century mother happily has not to fear for her sons. Laurence Sterne’s father was shot in a duel arising from a dispute over a goose.