Formerly, practically the whole of the West End was more or less given up to the fashionable world, and the great majority of people in Piccadilly or St. James’s Street knew one another. The men then thought a good deal more of their dress than is to-day the case; indeed, having as a rule no occupation, it was for many one of the principal ends of their existence. The young man of that day lived principally in Mount Street, where, before it was rebuilt, comfortable furnished chambers could be procured for about a hundred a year—rather a difference this from the present Mount Street, in which an unfurnished flat of the simplest description costs about four or five hundred pounds per annum. In spite of their greater attention to dress, the dandies of another age were not so luxurious as the men of to-day—at least theirs was a different kind of luxury. They had no City avocations to attend to during the day, or restaurants to dine at in the evening, and consequently clubs played a much greater part in their lives than is now the case. A sort of mysterious solemnity used to attach to clubs in my youth, and we used to regard them with the greatest awe. To-day ladies frequently call for male relatives at their clubs; years ago such a thing was absolutely unheard of, and would have been regarded with the utmost consternation and horror. In the ’forties, I remember, it was hardly considered proper for a young lady to walk past the big bow-window at White’s, at that time filled with the dandies of the day; and I well remember my father telling our governess to take care that my sister and myself, when going down St. James’s Street, should walk on the other side of the road. The peculiar charm of this old street has been best expressed, I think, by my delightful friend of other days, the late Mr. Frederick Locker:— Why, that’s where Sacharissa sigh’d When Waller read his ditty; Where Byron lived and Gibbon died, And Alvanley was witty. At dusk when I am strolling there Dim forms will rise around me, Lepel flits past me in her chair, And Congreve’s airs astound me. And once Nell Gwynne, a frail young sprite, Look’d kindly when I met her; I shook my head, perhaps,—but quite Forgot to quite forget her. IX The London parks—Old prints—Rural London—Deer in Hyde Park—Its Gates—Proposed railway station in the Park—Riots—Origin of the name “Rotten Row”—An unlucky suitor and his trousers—Lady Diana Beauclerk and the Baron de Géramb—Decadence of dress—The _vis-à-vis_—The end of duelling—Lord Camelford’s will—His burial-place—The first Lord Camelford—His Lines on Lady Hervey. The history of the London parks is a very interesting one, tinged, as it is, with a certain amount of romance.