And now, let us return to Hyde Park, and mark its progress to the end of the seventeenth century. Many a letter has been printed to show how speedily Hyde Park became the sacred ground of fashion. We will add to these illustrations one that has never been quoted. In January, 1639, the fashionable world was looking out with pleasurable anticipation to the park season; so early in the year Madame Anne Merrick wrote to fair Mrs. Lyddall (both ladies were in the country) to entreat her ladyship to come up to town ‘in Hyde Park time.’ Madame Merrick adds: ‘The fear of a war with the Scots doth not a little trouble me, lest all the young gallants should go for soldiers, and the ladies should want servants to accompany them to that place of pleasure which both of us so zealously affect. I long to see those French ladies, Mme. Mornay and Mme. Darcy, and the new stars of the English court, Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Vaughan.’ The lady inquires whether sleeves are still worn down to the wrist--the mode brought in by the Duchess de Chevreuse. ‘Do they wear their necks up?’ she asks, meaning covered, not as Herrick says, with ‘a lawn about the shoulders, thrown into a sweet distraction.’ Mistress Merrick does not love the fashion of the gown coming up to the throat, and boldly says, ‘I do not hold any one worthy of a fair neck, or any other good part, that is not free to show it.’ How she looked, head upon pillow, and afterwards saucily erect in the park, may be seen in the modest lady’s request to fair Mrs. Lyddall to buy for her ‘half a dozen white night coifs which tie under the chin, and as many white hoods to wear over them a-days.’ Thus the park beauties of Charles’s time clapt their hoods over their night coifs, and exhibited in the park The sleepy eye that speaks the melting soul.