of the Mall with imaginary personages. The encampment of ’Eighty, the Temple of Concord, and the Humane Society’s drags, are inextricably mixed up with scenes from Wycherley and Etherege; and pet passages from the “Trivia” and the “Rape of the Lock.” I must bring myself back to reason and St. James’s Park, and eight o’clock in the morning. I must deal henceforth in realities. Here is one. It is the morning of the 30th of January, 1649, and a King of England walks across the frozen park, from St. James’s, where he has slept, to Whitehall, the palace of his fathers. Armed men walk before, armed men walk behind and around; but they are no guards of honour. They escort a prisoner to the scaffold. The High Court of Justice has adjudged Charles Stuart, King of England, a traitor, and has decreed that he shall be put to death by severing his head from his body. President Bradshaw has put off his red robe, the man without a name has put on his black mask; the axe is sharpened, the sawdust spread, the block prepared, the velvet-covered coffin yawns; on its lid is already the leaden plate with the inscription, “King Charles, 1649.” It is not my fault, dear reader, if the spot which your author and artist to command have selected for illustration of the eighth hour ante-meridian, be so rich in historical and literary recollections; that we may fancy every inch of its surface trodden and re-trodden till the very soil has sunk, by the feet of the departed great; that the student, and the lover of old lore, must arrest himself perforce at every tree, and evoke remembrance at every pace. And centuries hence the Mall of St. James’s Park will be as famous to our descendants for our deeds as it is now to us for the presence of our ancestors. Is not the Mall yet one of the most favoured resorts of the British aristocracy? Do not the carriages of the nobility and gentry rattle over its broad bosom to dinner parties, to opera, to concerts, and to balls? We have seen their chariot lamps a hundred times—we humble pedestrians and plebeians—gleaming among the tufted trees, wills-o’-the-wisp of Belgravia and Tyburnia. Is not St. James’s Park bounded now as then by high and mighty buildings: War Office, Admiralty, Stationery Office, Barracks? Do not the Duke of York’s steps lead from the Duke of York’s column, between two _corps de logis_, one occupied by wings—ethereal wings, though made of brick and stucco, of the House of Carlton, the abode of George the Great (the great Fritz was called “_der grosse_”) of England? And the Mall itself? Is it not overlooked by Stafford House, the palatial; by Marlborough House, the vast and roomy, once sacred to the memory of the victor of Ramilies and of “Old Sarah!” but now given up to some people called artists, connected with something called the English school, and partially used as a livery and bait stable for the late Duke of Wellington’s funeral car, with its sham trophies and sham