Gradually the Park became more and more a favourite place in which to stroll. Others were admitted besides the Court circle, the privilege being first accorded to the tenants of the houses at Westminster. Milton, who lived at one time in Petty France, near where Queen Anne’s Gate now stands, planted a tree in the garden overlooking the Park, which survived until recent times, would be one of those to enjoy the advantage. Charles I. passed this way on his last journey to Whitehall on the fatal 30th of January, and tradition says he paused to notice a tree planted by his brother Henry. During the Commonwealth, the Park still was resorted to. In the sprightly letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple are some vivid little touches in reference to it. She writes from the country in March 1654: “And hark you, can you tell me whether the gentleman that lost a crystal box the 1st of February in St. James’s Park or Old Spring Gardens has found it again or not? I have a strong curiosity to know.” Again, in June of the same year, she writes from London, where she was paying a visit: “I’ll swear they will not allow me time for anything; and to show how absolutely I am governed, I need but tell you that I am every night in the Park and at New Spring Gardens, where, though I come with a mask, I cannot escape being known nor my conversation being admired.” The most brilliant days of its history began, however, in Charles II.’s reign. He entirely remodelled it, and began the work soon after his return from exile, imbued with foreign ideas of gardening. It has always been supposed that Le Nôtre was responsible for the designs, and it has often been asserted that he himself came to England to see them carried out. But close investigation has furnished no proof of this, and it is practically certain that, although invited, and allowed by Louis XIV. to come to England, he never actually did so. Other “French gardeners” certainly came, and one of them, La Quintinge, made many English friends, and kept up a correspondence with them after his return to France. Perrault probably visited London also, and may have superintended the “French gardeners” who were employed on St. James’s Park. They transformed the whole place. Avenues--the Mall and “Birdcage Walk”--were planted. A straight canal passed down the middle, and at the end, near the present Foreign Office, was the duck decoy. The “Birdcage Walk” is no fantastic title, for birds were literally kept there in cages. These were probably aviaries for large birds, and not little hanging cages, as has been sometimes suggested. A well-known passage occurs in Evelyn’s Diary, 1664, where he enumerates some of the birds and beasts he saw during one of his walks through the Park. The pelican delighted him, although “a melancholy waterfowl,” and he watched the skilful way it devoured fish; and it is not surprising that he recorded the strange fact that one of the two Balearian cranes