rable prospect." This path was skirted by a wooded
border, and at the extreme end was set with iron hoops, "for the purpose
of playing a game with a ball called the mall." ["Our Pall Mall is,
I believe, derived from paille maille, a game somewhat analogous to
cricket, and imported from France in the reign of the second Charles.
It was formerly played in St. James's Park, and in the exercise of the
sport a small hammer or mallet was used to strike the ball. I think it
worth noting that the Malhe crest is a mailed arm and hand, the latter
grasping a mallet."--NOTES AND QUERIES, 1st series, vol. iii. p. 351.]

In St. James's Park Samuel Pepys first saw the Duke of York playing
at "pelemele"; and likewise in 1662 witnessed with astonishment people
skate upon the ice there, skates having been just introduced from
Holland; on another occasion he enjoyed the spectacle of Lords
Castlehaven and Arran running down and killing a stout buck for a wager
before the king. And one sultry July day, meeting an acquaintance here,
the merry soul took him to the farther end, where, seating himself under
a tree in a corner, he sung him some blithesome songs. It was likewise
in St. James's Park the Duke of York, meeting John Milton one day, asked
him if his blindness was not to be regarded as a just punishment from
heaven, due to his having written against the martyred king. "If so,
sir," replied the great poet and staunch republican, "what must we think
of his majesty's execution upon a scaffold?" To which question his royal
highness vouchsafed no reply.

It was a favourite custom of his majesty, who invariably rose betimes,
to saunter in the park whilst the day was young and pass an hour or two
in stroking the heads of his feathered favourites in the aviary, feeding
the fowls in the pond with biscuits, and playing with the crowd of
spaniels ever attending his walks. For his greater amusement he had
brought together in the park a rare and valuable collection of birds
and beasts; amongst which were, according to a quaint authority, "an
onocratylus, or pelican, a fowl between a stork and a swan--a melancholy
water-fowl brought from Astracan by the Russian ambassador." This writer
tells us, "It was diverting to see how the pelican would toss up and
turn a flat fish, plaice or flounder, to get it right into its gullet
at its lower beak, which being filmy stretches to a prodigious wideness
when it devours a great fish. Here was also a small water