boundaries was within Hyde Park; for, in the description of Old Lodge division, especial mention is made of " that small parcel of ground formerly taken out of the park, and used as a fortification, being at the corner of this division called Park Corner." The fortification here alluded to was the large fort with four bastions thrown up by the citizens in 1642, on the ground now occupied by Hamilton Place. On this several houses were subsequently erected during the Protectorate, which were after the Restoration granted on lease to James Hamilton, Esq., the Ranger. Upon his death, the lease was renewed for ninety-nine years to Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton in 1692. Apsley House stands on the site of the Old Lodge, and is held under the Crown: the original Apsley House was built by Lord Bathurst, when chancellor. By these grants the triangular piece of ground between the present gate and Park Lane came to be cut off from the park, the south-east corner of which, in 1652, extended along the north side of the highway, quite up to the end of Park Lane. The gradual encroachments made upon the park at its west end render it more difficult to ascertain its extent in that direction. The following indications may assist:-When King William purchased his mansion of the Earl of Nottingham at Kensington, there were only twenty-six acres of garden-ground attached to it. The Palace Green, on the west of the palace, was part of these twenty-six acres. We know that the old conduit of Henry VIII., on the west side of Palace Green, was built by that monarch on a piece of waste ground, called "the Moor," outside of the park. The mansion of the Earl of Nottingham must therefore have stood pretty close upon the eastern limits of his twenty-six acres. This view is corroborated by two circumstances. The first is, that the grounds acquired by Sir Heneage Finch, Recorder of London, ancestor of the Earl of Nottingham, between 1630 and 1640, are described in old charters as lying within the parishes of Kensington, St. Margaret's, Westminster, and Paddington. These three parishes meet at a point to the west of Kensington Palace, nearly equidistant from its outer gate in the town of Kensington, the circular pond in Kensington Gardens, and the junction of Bayswater and Kensington Gravel-pits on the western descent of Bayswater Hill. The second circumstance alluded to is, that the grounds purchased by King William from the Earl of Nottingham contained a small part of the original Hyde Park; Sir Heneage Finch, son of the Recorder, having obtained from Charles II. a grant of a "ditch and fence which divide Hyde Park from the lands, grounds, and possessions of the said Sir Heneage Finch;"" the said ditch containing in breadth ten feet, and in length one hundred and fifty roods, beginning from the south highway leading to the town of Kensington, and from thence crossing to the north highway leading to the town of Acton, which said piece of ground is by this grant disparked for ever." All these considerations seem to warrant the assumption that Hyde Park originally extended at its western extremity almost up to the east front of Kensington Palace.

But the indentures of sale enable us also to form some kind of idea of the appearance of the ground within these boundaries at the time the park was sold by order of Parliament. Great care seems to have been taken, in dividing the park into five lots or parcels, to divide the "pools" in the park equally between them. Two are attached to the Gravel-pits, two to the Kensington, three to the Middle, and four to the Old Lodge division. The relative positions and extent of these

divisions, and the manner in which the "pools" are described, show that they must have formed a chain extending in a waving line from "Bayard's watering" to "the Spittle mead" at Knightsbridge-the exact course of the Serpentine River, and the stream sent off from its lower extremity. No pools are allotted to the Banqueting-house division, the reason of which seems to have been that it contained "a parcel of enclosed ground lying on the north-east corner of this division, formerly used as a meadow, commonly called Tyburn Meadow," the north-east corner being the angle formed by the great road to Acton and the road now called Park Lane. From this corner a depression of the ground can still be traced extending to the Serpentine between the heights on which the farm-house and the powder-magazine stand. These facts lead us to infer that Hyde Park was then intersected by a chain of "pools," (which old muniments of the manor of Paddington and the manor of Knightsbridge show must have been expansions in the bed of a stream,) tracing the same line as the Serpentine of the present day, and a shallow water-course running down to it from an enclosed meadow where Cumberland Gate now stands. The indentures of sale moreover enable us to make a pretty near guess as to the appearance of the ground intersected by these water-courses. The wood on the north-west or Gravel-pit division was valued at 24287. 2s. 6d. ; that on the south-west or Kensington division only at 2617. 7s. 6.; and yet the Gravel-pit division contained not much more than 112 acres, while the Kensington division contained about 177 acres. Again, the Middle division, which lay on the north side of the park between the Gravel-pit division on the west and the Banqueting-house division on the east, contained only 83 acres, 2 roods, 38 poles, and the Banqueting-house and Old Lodge divisions contained between them 247 acres, 3 roods, 16 poles; yet the wood on the Middle division was valued at 1225/. 18s. 4d., while that on the other two was not valued at more than 11847. 11s. 2d. From these facts we infer that the north-western parts of the park and the banks of the "pools" were thickly wooded; that its north-east corner had fewer trees; and that the part which lay towards Kensington Gore and the town of Kensington was almost entirely denuded of wood. To complete the picture we must bear in mind that in the south-west part of the Kensington division there was "a parcel of meadowground enclosed for the deer;" that in the Banqueting-house division there was the enclosed Tyburn meadow on its north-east corner, and "that building intended at the first erection thereof for a banqueting-house, situate near the south-west corner of this division," from its position the house afterwards called Cake House or Mince-pie House, where the farm now stands; that where Apsley House is now was "the Old Lodge with the barn and stable belonging," and immediately east of it the remains of the temporary fortification thrown up in 1642. The park was enclosed-it is described in the indentures as "that impaled ground called Hide Park”—but with the exception of Tyburn meadow, the enclosure for the deer, the Old Lodge, and the Banqueting-house, it seems to have been left entirely in a state of nature. Grammont alludes to the park as presenting the ungainly appearance of a bare field in the time of Charles II. The value put upon the materials of the Old Lodge and Banqueting-house does not excite any very inordinate ideas of their splendour; it is probable, however, that the Ring, which we find a fashionable place of resort early in the reign of Charles II.,

without any mention being made of its origin, was originally the ornamental ground attached to the latter.

In this state Hyde Park seems to have continued with little alteration till the year 1730, and even then the improvements were almost exclusively confined to the part enclosed under the name of Kensington Gardens, to the history of which we must now turn our attention.

It has already been stated that the gardens attached to Kensington Palace when purchased by King William did not exceed twenty-six acres. Evelyn alludes to them on the 25th of February, 1690-1, in these words:-"I went to Kensington, which King William had bought of Lord Nottingham, and altered, but was yet a patched building; but with the gardens, however, it is a very neat villa, having to it the park and a strait new way through this park." In a view of the gardens near London in December, 1691, communicated to the Society of Antiquaries by Dr. Hamilton from a MS. in his possession, and printed in the twelfth volume of the Archæologia,' the gardens are thus described:-" Kensington Gardens are not great, nor abounding with fine plants. The orange, lemon, myrtle, and what other trees they had there in summer, were all removed to Mr. Loudon's or Mr. Wise's green-house at Brompton Park, a little mile from them. But the walks and grass were very fine, and they were digging up a plot of four or five acres to enlarge their garden."

Bowack, who wrote in 1705, has given an account of the improvements then carrying on by order of Queen Anne:-" But whatever is deficient in the house, is and will be made up in the gardens, which want not any advantages of nature to render them entertaining, and are beautified with all the elegancies of art (statues and fountains excepted) There is a noble collection of foreign plants, and fine neat greens, which makes it pleasant all the year, and the contrivance, variety, and disposition of the whole is extremely pleasing; and so frugal have they been of the room they had, that there is not an inch but what is well improved, the whole with the house not being above twenty-six acres. Her Majesty has been pleased lately to plant near thirty acres more towards the north, sepa rated from the rest only by a stately green-house, not yet finished; upon this spot is near one hundred men daily at work, and so great is the progress they have made, that in less than nine months the whole is levelled, laid out and planted, and when finished will be very fine. Her Majesty's gardener has the management of this work." It appears from this passage that previous to 1705, Kensington Gardens did not extend farther to the north than the Conservatory, originally designed for a banqueting-house, and frequently used as such by Queen Anne. The eastern boundary of the gardens would seem to have been at this time nearly in the line of the broad walk which crosses them before the east front of the palace. Palace Green seems at that time to have been considered a part of the private pleasure-grounds attached to the palace, for the low circular stone building now used as an engine-house for supplying the palace with water was erected by order of Queen Anne, facing an avenue of elms, for a summer The town of Kensington for some years later did not extend so far to the east as it now does. The kitchen gardens which extend north of the palace towards the Gravel-pits, and the thirty acres north of the Conservatory, added by Anne to the pleasure gardens, may have been the fifty-five acres "detached and severed from the park, lying in the north-west corner thereof," granted in the 16th

recess.

of Charles II. to Hamilton, ranger of the park, and Birch, auditor of excise, to be walled and planted with "pippins and red-streaks," on condition of their furnishing apples or cider for the King's use. The alcove at the end of the avenue leading from the south front of the palace to the wall on the Kensington road was also built by Anne's orders. So that Kensington Palace in her reign seems to have stood in the midst of fruit and pleasure gardens, with pleasant alcoves on the west and south, and a stately banqueting-house on the east-the whole confined between the Kensington and Uxbridge roads, the west side of Palace Green, and the line of the broad walk before the east front of the palace. Tickell has perpetrated a dreary mythological poem on Kensington Gardens, which we have ransacked in vain for some descriptive touches of their appearance in Queen Anne's time, and have therefore been obliged to have recourse to Addison's prose in the 477th Number of the Spectator:-" I think there are as many kinds of gardening as poetry: your makers of pastures and flower gardens are epigrammatists and sonnetteers in this art; contrivers of bowers and grottoes, treillages and cascades, are romance writers. Wise and Loudon are our heroic poets; and if as a critic I may single out any passage of their works to commend, I shall take notice of that part in the upper garden at Kensington, which was at first nothing but a gravel-pit. It must have been a fine genius for gardening that could have thought of forming such an unsightly hollow into so beautiful an area, and to have hit the eye with so uncommon and agreeable a scene as that which it is now wrought into. To give this particular spot of ground the greater effect, they have made a very pleasing contrast; for as on one side of the walk you see this hollow basin, with its several little plantations lying so conveniently under the eye of the beholder, on the other side of it there appears a seeming mount, made up of trees one higher than another as they approach the centre. A spectator who has not heard of this account of it, would think this circular mount was not only a real one, but that it had been actually scooped out of that hollow space, which I have before mentioned. I never yet met with any one who had walked in this garden who was not struck with that part of it which I have mentioned."

In reference to the operations of Queen Caroline, Daines Barrington remarks, in his Essay on the Progress of Gardening :'-"It is believed that George I. rather improved the gardens at Herrnhausen than those of any of his English palaces. In the succeeding reign, Queen Caroline threw a string of ponds in Hyde Park into one, so as to form what is called the Serpentine River, from its being not exactly straight, as all ponds and canals were before. She is likewise well known to have planted and laid out the gardens of Richmond and Kensington upon a larger scale, and in better taste, than we have any instances before that period. She seems also to have been the first introducer of expensive buildings in gardens, if one at Lord Barrington's is excepted." And yet Queen Anne's Green-house or Conservatory in the very gardens he was writing about must have cost something. Nearly 300 acres Nearly 300 acres were added by Queen Caroline to Kensington Gardens. Opposite the Ring in Hyde Park a mound was thrown across the valley to dam up the streams connecting the chain of "pools" already mentioned. All the waters and conduits in the park, granted in 1663 to Thomas Haines on a lease of ninety-nine years, were re-purchased by the Crown. Along the line of the ponds a canal was begun to be dug. The excavation was four

hundred yards in length and forty feet deep, and cost 60007. At the south-east end of the gardens a mount was raised of the soil dug out of the canal. On the north and south the grounds, of which these works formed the characteristic features, were bounded by high parallel walls. On the north-east a fosse and low wall, reaching from the Uxbridge road to the Serpentine, at once shut in the gardens, and conducted the eye along their central vista, over the Serpentine to its extremity, and across the park. To the east of Queen Anne's gardens, immediately below the principal windows of the east front of the palace, a reservoir was formed into a circular pond, and thence long vistas were carried through the woods that circled it round, to the head of the Serpentine; to the fosse and low wall, affording a view of the park (this sort of fence was an invention of Bridgeman, "an attempt then deemed so astonishing, that the common people called them Ha-has, to express their surprise at finding a sudden and unperceived check to their walk"), and to the mount constructed out of the soil dug from the canal. This mount was planted with evergreens, and on the summit was erected a small temple, made to turn at pleasure, to afford shelter from the wind. The three principal vistas were crossed at right angles, by others at regular intervals-an arrangement which has been complained of as disagreeably formal, with great injustice, for the formality is only in the ground plot, not in any view of the garden that can meet the eye of the spectator at one time. Queen Anne's gardens underwent no further alteration than was necessary to make them harmonise with the extended grounds, of which they had now become a part.

Since the death of George II. Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens have undergone no changes of consequence. The Ring, in the former, has been

deserted for the drive, and presents now an appearance which any Jonathan Oldbuck might pardonably mistake for the vestiges of a Roman encampment. New plantations have been laid out to compensate for the gradual decay of the old wood. That part of the south wall of Kensington Gardens which served to intercept between it and the Kensington road a narrow strip of the park where the cavalry barracks have been erected, has been thrown down. Queen Caroline's