“Here a well-polished Mall gives us the joy To see our Prince his matchless force employ. No sooner had he touch’d the flying ball But ’tis already more than half the Mall.”[323] When Pepys stopped to have a talk with the keeper of the Mall—who was “sweeping of it” at the moment—he examined with interest its earthen flooring, spread with powdered cockle-shells. Evelyn, on the other hand, cared more about the birds and beasts that inhabited the Park—the “deare of severall countries,” the guinea-fowl and Arabian sheep; the pelican, and the melancholy waterfowl brought by the Russian Ambassador from Astracan; the Solan geese, and the pet crane with a real wooden leg—“made by a soldier.” Waller has described St. James’s Park “as lately improved by his Majesty”— “Methinks I see the love that shall be made, The lovers walking in that amorous shade; The Gallants dancing by the riverside— They bathe in summer and in winter slide. Methinks I hear the music in the boats, And the loud echo which returns the notes. ... The ladies angling in the crystal lake Feast on the waters with the prey they take; At once victorious with their lines and eyes They make the fishes and the men their prize.” Mr. Waller saw everything _couleur de rose_. “I know his calling as a Poet,” wrote Lady Ranelagh once to Robert Boyle, when Waller had been paying her one of his elaborate compliments, “gives him license to say as great things as he can without intending that they should signify anything more than that he said them.”[324] And it is possible some of the older inhabitants of Pall Mall did not look so kindly on the “improvements” in St. James’s Park.