82 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 
The palmy days of St. James’s Park may have passed 
away—no longer is the fate of nations and the happiness 
of lives decided under its ancient elms—but those days 
have left their mark. Every path, every tree, every 
green-sward, could tell its story. The Park is now 
more beautiful than it ever was, even though fashion has 
deserted it. The last changes are but one more link in 
the long historic chain. It brings the Park of the Stuarts, 
the Mall of the Queen Anne’s age of letters, down to our 
own great Queen and the days of Expansion and Empire. 
A stroll under its shady trees and by its sparkling water 
must be replete with suggestions to the moralist, with 
thoughts to the poet, and with an inexpressible charm to 
the ordinary appreciative Londoner. 
