26 LONDON PARKS 6? GARDENS 
and feasted the guests in the banqueting-house. There 
were brilliantly caparisoned horses, men and women in 
costly velvets and brocades, stiff frills, plumed hats and 
embroidered gloves. Picture the cortege entering by the 
old lodge, where now is Hyde Park Corner, the honoured 
guest, for whom the day’s sport was inaugurated—such 
as John Casimir, son of the Elector Palatine, who showed 
his skill by killing a particular deer out of a herd of 300 
—surrounded by some of his foreign attendants, and 
escorted by all the court gallants of the day. 
The Park must then have been as wild as the New 
or Sherwood Forests of to-day. The tall trees, with 
their sturdy stems, were then untouched by smoky 
air, the sylvan glades and pasture lands had no distant 
vistas of houses and chimneys to spoil their rural aspect, 
while far off the pile of the buildings of Westminster 
Abbey—without the conspicuous towers, which were 
not finished till 1714—might be seen rising beyond the 
swamps and fens of St. James’s Park. Hyde Park on 
a May evening even now is still beautiful, if looked at 
from the eastern side across a golden mist, against 
which the dark trees stand up mysteriously, when a 
glow of sunset light seems to transform even ragged 
little Cockney children into fairies. It wants but little 
imagination to see that same golden haze peopled with 
hunstmen, and to hear the sound of the horn instead 
of the roar of carriages. 
The next scene which can be brought vividly before 
the mind’s eye is very different from the last pageant. 
These are troublous times. The monarch and his 
courtiers are occupied in far other pursuits than hunt¬ 
ing deer. Charles I. was fighting in the vain endeavour 
to keep his throne, and Londoners were preparing to 
