It is a curious fact that the principal gate of Hyde Park, which is close to Apsley House, possesses no name whatever, being simply known as Hyde Park Corner. The north-east entrance of the park, the Marble Arch, was removed to its present position in 1851; before that date it stood in front of Buckingham Palace. Near the gate, facing Great Cumberland Place, was the place of execution known as Tyburn, and when a wall used to enclose this corner military executions were carried out within it. In this spot were erected the only gallows ever set up in Hyde Park; this was for the purpose of hanging a Sergeant Smith who, two years previously, in 1745, had deserted to the Scotch rebels. In the Green Park the ancient course of the Tyburn has not entirely disappeared, and may even be traced by the winding depression which remains where it formerly flowed. There was formerly a pond in the middle of this park, but this was filled up in 1842, at the same time that the Ranger’s Lodge was razed to the ground. The design for Spencer House, which looks into the Green Park, though known as having been the work of Vardy, is also said to have in reality been taken from a drawing by Inigo Jones, the pediment alone being purely original. Probably few people have any idea that a serious proposal was once actually made to erect a railway station in Hyde Park. This was to be inside the park, on the left-hand side, not very far from the entrance at Hyde Park Corner, and was to serve as terminus to a projected London and Richmond railway. At the upper end of the road skirting the garden wall of Buckingham Palace, now called Constitution Hill, the great Sir Robert Peel met his death on a June afternoon in 1850, when his horse, having shied at something, threw its rider over his head, an accident which led to a fatal termination a day or two later. On Constitution Hill, by a somewhat strange coincidence, two attempts were made upon the late Queen Victoria by individuals who were more or less of deranged mind—Edward Oxford, on June 10, 1840, and John Francis, on May 30, 1842. A little more than a month later a hunchbacked youth also levelled a pistol at Her Majesty not very far away from the same locality. His name was Bean, and the outrage occurred whilst the Queen was proceeding from Buckingham Palace to the Chapel Royal. A madman who entertained similar murderous designs also attempted to enter Buckingham Palace in 1839, but was fortunately seized by a sentry before he could do any harm. In former days lunatics were not kept under such strict observation and control as is at present the case. In the early ’forties, for instance, a regular panic was produced in Kensington Gardens by the appearance of a half-clad lunatic on horseback, who created a great deal of confusion amongst the people listening to a band. The quaint old name of Constitution Hill was the “King’s coach-way” to Kensington, whilst the Green Park was at one time known as Upper St. James’s Park.