o last for fifteen days. This fair, we are
told, was "not for trade and merchandise, but for musick, showes,
drinking, gaming, raffling, lotteries, stageplays and drolls." It was
immensely popular, and was frequented by "all the nobility of the town,"
wherein, perhaps, we see the germs of the Mayfair we know. It must be
remembered that Grosvenor and Berkeley Squares, with their diverging
streets, were not then begun, and that all this land now covered by a
network of houses lay in fields on the outskirts of London, while Hyde
Park Corner was still the end of the world so far as Londoners were
concerned. It was about the end of the seventeenth century that the
above-mentioned squares were built, and at once became fashionable, and
as the May fair continued to flourish until 1708, it must have seen the
growth of the district to which it was to give its name. Though
suppressed, doubtless on account of disorders, it revived again, with
booths for jugglers, prize-fighting contests, boxing matches, and the
baiting of bears and bulls, and was not finally abolished until the end
of the eighteenth century.

But Mayfair is not the only district to be noticed; we have also its
rival--Belgravia--lying south of Hyde Park Corner, which is equally
included in the electoral district of St. George's, Hanover Square. This
electoral district takes in the three most fashionable churches in the
Metropolis, including the mother church, St. Paul's, Wilton Place, and
St. Peter's, Eaton Square, besides many others, whose marriage registers
cannot compete either in quantity or quality of names with these three.
The district can also show streets as poor as some are rich; it includes
not only Park Lane and Piccadilly, but also Pimlico and the dreary part
to the south of Buckingham Palace Road. It is a long, narrow district,
stretching from the river to Oxford Street. As a parish, St. George's
was separated from St. Martin's in 1724, and it is now included in the
city of Westminster, with which it has been associated from its earliest
history. In the charter given by King Edgar to the monks at Westminster,
their possessions were defined as reaching to the highroad we now call
Oxford Street on the north, and to Tyburn Lane, or Park Lane, on the
west. But of this the parishes of St. Margaret and St. John at
Westminster were the City, and the rest lay in the "Liberties."

The larger portion of the district is included in the ancient estate of
Eia, 8