'5'340 016 @gi Reclass 6-20-31. NDL for MLS. CONTENTS. London Societies: No. I. Society for the Practice of Part-singing Sans Cœur Sir Philip Sidney Sketches of London Society: The Swell An Episode of the Ball-room 19 22 25 30 385 M. J. Lawless Adelaide Claxton 17 F. Walker 441 271 Anglo-Roman Life 234 Another Peep at Anglo-Roman Life.. 413 No. I.--Society for the Practice of Sketches, ILLUSTRATIVE OF SOCIETY AT HOME AND ABROAD. IV. The Ordeal by Search" No. II.-A Conversazione at Willis's Domini, 1862.. Hints to Poets .. May in London Artists' Notes from Choice Pictures: No. 1. Sancho before the Duchess 199 Floral Hints and Gossip-Window Flower Markets-Flower Shows-New London Flowers-The Floral Orna- 11 On the Grotesque in Things Sorrowful 425 Operatic Notes and Anecdotes :- Philosophy in Slippers.-On Sickness ·· Contents. 209 378 184 185 186 356 Poetry. A May Carol 355 Beauty's Toilette-The Finishing Touch 265 Charades, by the late T. K. Hervey.. 156 Answers to Charades 208 ·· 251 350 283 229 The Romance of the Wiry-haired Ter- 348 242 54 49 Round about London: City Men going Social Sketches in a Coffee-room The Widow and the Fatherless Some Old School' Reflections The Bloodless Battle of Brighton The Children of the New Forest The Cost of Amusing the Public The Grumbler's Corner.-A complaint The Literature of the Blessed Isles:- 150 76 ·· The New Picture and the New Process 258 The Story of an Old English Mansion- 159 162 164 109 187 190 272 42 210 121 A STROLL IN A DAY cold, gray, cheerless as any day in February, and yet there is something in the air that speaks of milder breezes, of violets, and of spring-time; a something that lures me away from the warm, glowing hearth, out from between hermetically closed windows and doors; through the dreary, bustling town and away from the din and fashion of Piccadilly. Past that statue which Westmacott and the ladies of England have raised to do honour to the Duke and themselves, to a quiet spot-quiet enough at this season of the year— in the Park which takes its name from the old manor of the Hyde adjoining Knightsbridge. Back to some of the seventeenthcentury summers as I walk along over the delicate coating of hoarfrost crisping under my feet, through some of the years that have gone by since Hyde Park, then in possession of abbot and convent, was first enclosed for the public good. It is not a very important fact that the first keeper, George Roper, was appointed early in the reign of Edward VI.; but it is rather interesting to know that he had only 'sixpence per diem' as a reward for the trouble it must have cost him to keep such a great, wild, unkempt and uncared-for place, as we learn this then highly rural Park was. Nor will it be necessary to dwell at length on the division of the Park in 1652 into three portions. The names of the purchasers and the sums they gave are of little consequence; they were large sums, all ending in a few pence. VOL. I.-NO. I. THE PARK.' T 6 Back through the years that have passed since Hyde Park was intersected by a chain of ponds, now flowing together-the Serpentine of our days to the time when the 'Ring' which was laid out in the reign of Charles I. was in its glory; long, long before it was deserted for the Ride' and 'Ladies' Mile,' and left to present an appearance which causes an observer of the present day to waver between whether it might be the remains of a Roman encampment, or of an unrivalled troupe from Astley's at which he gazed, instead of having once been the resort of all that was brilliant, wealthy, witty and beautiful in the world of the London society of that day. And thus, as I walk, gradually fade away these our modern days and forms, and before me rises a time when the doings here were so gay that prudent, far-sighted Pepys (the most wonderful instance on record of a man succeeding in life through always doing the right thing at the right time, whether that right thing chanced to be the eating of humble pie before Majesty, or the breathing a longwinded prayer before the Puritan Protector)-Pepys on a pleasuretour heaved a sigh on the night of the 30th April, 1661, for that he was somewhere else, and could not be in Hyde Park among the great gallants and ladies which will be very fine.' " Down the stream of time to later days than when Cromwell, whom somehow or other one can never imagine to have been much of a B |