This is advance at the western end of the Park, but farther east, that is to say in Piccadilly, still further advance is found. For within a stone’s throw of Hyde Park Corner, and near where the Duke of Cambridge lived so long, is a Ladies’ Club and also an Automobile Club. Ladies’ Clubs are not so new, although it is within the memory of many women of fifty when the first women’s club was started by an Englishwoman, Mrs. Croley, in New York. But even five years ago motors were of such recent introduction that a club for enthusiasts would have been a meagre affair, while now it is filled to overflowing. So quickly moves the world. What, one wonders, will be the next innovation in or near Hyde Park? From the gaiety and riches of automobiles we turn to a sad and pathetic spectacle,—from youth, health, and strength we pass to decay. Such is the panorama of life’s history. As we saw, the first review took place in Hyde Park in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; the last thing of the kind was in December 1907, on the occasion of the Dinner given by the _Daily Telegraph_ to the Indian Mutiny veterans, when one of the most pathetic incidents of modern times occurred within its gates. Lord Roberts reviewed his old comrades of fifty years before, men long past their prime, old, some decrepid, doubled with age, yet full of honour. As a result of this inspection, the renowned Field-Marshal pleaded for the relief of the straitened circumstances of these men, many of whom were in the workhouse; and such is the charity of England, that in two days—His Majesty, as is his custom, being in the forefront in any good cause—over £5000 was subscribed in response, quickly followed by other large sums, to create a fund for the benefit of these aged soldiers. So the scene in Hyde Park constantly changes, ever holding the mirror up to history and romance. CHAPTER XIII NATURE IN THE PARK Not long ago I came across, in the Vienna _Neue Freie Presse_, some passages in which an Austrian gentleman described the fascinations of Hyde Park as it appears to a foreigner. He sees it in an aspect that is perhaps rarely revealed to ourselves, as the “most original park in Europe.” “Hyde Park,” he says, “is flat and poor—an English heath with only something approaching to a garden it its gates. Its charm is its vastness, its irregularity, the rest which it affords the eye with its seemingly endless stretches of turf with grazing sheep. One forgets that one is in the heart of the capital of the world. Is it the Lüneburger Heide? Is it the land of Tristan, dark Cornwall? And will not the melancholy song of the shepherd be suddenly heard?