THE MALL IN ST. JAMES'S PARK. (Page 256.)

THE avenue seen in the Plate is the grand Mall leading from Spring Garden-gate to Buckingham-house, which is seen at the end of the hall.  The building on the right is St. James's Palace, representing the garden front of the drawing-room and presence-chamber.  It is of brick ornamented with stone.  The Park was enclosed by Charles the Second, who planted the avenues, made the canal and the aviary adjacent to the Bird-cage Walk, which took its name from the cages hung in the trees.  The Mall used formerly to be much frequented by company, great part of which was often of the highest fashion.  It was common for it to be so crowded, as to make it very difficult even to pass along.  It is still a Sunday promenade; but its visitors are comparatively few; the fashionable walk at present being the Green-park of an evening, and Hyde-park and Kensington-gardens in the morning.  Peers, Privy Counsellors, Ambassadors, and other persons of distinction, generally have permission to pass through the Park, either on horseback or in carriages, by license from the Secretary of State; and a list of persons enjoying this privilege is hung up in the passage of the Horse-guards, for the direction of the soldier on duty.  The road lies immediately under the walls which separate the gardens of Pall-mall and of the palace from the Park.  On the right of the Plate are seen two of the horse-guards, two of whom regularly patrol the Park when the Royal Family are in town.

(p. 479)