St. James's Park, where Buckingham Palace, Marlborough House, and St. James's Palace stand, is very pretty. There is a great piece of water in it, and on this live many ducks and some other kinds of rare birds. During the war the water was partly drained off, though one end was left for the birds, on the other part were put up wooden offices for the clerks in government employ. Not far off you can see the permanent Government offices, where the men who have been appointed to do all the business of the country work. In the middle is the Horse Guards, where two magnificent soldiers on black horses are on guard. They have shining armour and helmets and waving white plumes, and look very splendid; but it must be rather dull for them sitting there on their horses for so many hours without moving until they are relieved by their comrades, who take it in their turn. In one of these great buildings, called the Treasury, all the work about the money which England has to spend on her soldiers and sailors is done; and in another, called the Admiralty, all the rules for the life of the sailors are arranged, and there are many others. A very long time ago, before anyone who is living now can remember, there was a garden in the corner of St. James's Park called Spring Gardens, and people used to go there to dance and enjoy themselves; here there were cows, and fashionable ladies used to get up early in the morning and go to drink the milk which had just been taken from the cows. At this place there was a spring of water, which used to start up from the ground if anyone walked over a particular piece of ground, and so pressed the grass with his foot. Sometimes a person did not know this, and would come walking quite gravely along and tread on that place, and a great stream of water would jump out of the ground all over him, and the other people would shout and laugh with amusement to see him so unexpectedly drenched. We would not like that much now--we should think it rather rude and unkind to laugh at such a thing; but people had rougher manners then. Now there are houses built nearly all over Spring Gardens. King Charles I., who had spent the night before he was murdered at St. James's Palace, walked this way when he went to be beheaded. There is a walk in St. James's Park called the Mall, and this name comes from Pall Mall, which was the name of an old game Charles II. used to play here. It must have been rather a funny game, and no one plays it now. The players had long mallets, which were not quite like croquet mallets, but more like golf clubs, and they had a wooden ball about the size of a croquet ball, and they tried to hit the ball through a hoop high up in the air hanging from a pole. It must have been difficult and rather dangerous to have a ball as big as a croquet ball hopping about and jumping up in the air, but we do not read of any accidents happening.