Nor must the grim records of Tyburn, so closely associated with the Park, be forgotten. From the date of the first public hanging on the outskirts of the Park in 1196, right down to late in the eighteenth century, a constant succession of unhappy beings were done to death here, sometimes for crimes which in our more merciful days would be hardly punished by a forty-shilling fine; and in the dread days of the religious persecution in the times of the Tudors, this place of heroic martyrdom saw some of the sublimest deaths in the history of our land. Upon hurdles, bound in ignominy, down Snow Hill and along the Oxford Road, just stopping for a last stirrup-cup to speed them upon their way at St. Giles’s Spital, were drawn martyrs and malefactors innumerable. The doomed Carthusians, the Maid of Kent, heroic Campion, the miserable Dr. Lopez and his Portuguese confederates; priests, protestants, patriots, and rogues, for ages all such took their last look on earth at Hyde Park; first from the rise behind Connaught Terrace, and later from the open space at the corner of the Edgware Road. Sporting ground, shambles, dwelling-place, scene of intrigue, theatre of Royal magnificence and military display, the Park through the centuries may be said almost to epitomise the history of England, and to the present day it has never ceased to be interesting. The enormous crowds that frequent the place even now is seen by the fact that it contains about 35,000 chairs, and even that number is often insufficient in the height of the season. Hundreds of long wooden benches, too, are scattered all over the Park, where “Love’s young dream” continues from morn till eve, year in year out. Soldiers from the barracks hard by at Knightsbridge make love to pretty nursemaids; young men from the shops in Bayswater or Kensington whisper sweet nothings into the ears of handsome girls, and, according to the practice favoured by them, sit with their arm round one another’s neck or waist. Various classes are to be found in Hyde Park. For instance, the élite drive on summer afternoons from five to seven, when four or five rows of motors and carriages moving along at crawling pace is quite a common sight. The fashionable drive used to be from Hyde Park Corner to Knightsbridge Barracks, but every few years fashions change, and during the last two seasons far more carriages were to be found between Hyde Park Corner and the Marble Arch.