"April 2nd.-To St. James's Park, where I saw the Duke of York playing at Pele Mele, the first time that ever I saw the sport."

Pele Mele, from the French paille maille, the name of a popular game, and of the place where it was practised. A round box bowl had to be struck with a mallet through a high arch of iron or raised ring, standing at either end of an alley; and he who did this at the fewest blows, or at the number agreed on, won. Charles II., who was fond of the game, caused a Pele Mele to be made "at the further end of St. James's Park," what is now called the Mall; but one had formerly existed on the site of the present Pall Mall. Says Waller :

"Here a well-polished mall gives us the joy

To see our Prince his matchless force employ ;
His manly posture and his graceful mien ;
Vigour and youth in all his motions seen;
No sooner has he touched the flying ball,
But 'tis already more than half the mall.
And such a fury from his arm has got,

As from a smoking culverin 'twere shot."

"November 11th.-Captain Ferrars carried me the first time that ever I saw any gaming-house, to one, entering into Lincoln's Inn Fields at the end of Bell Yard, where strange the folly of men to lay and lose so much money, and very glad I was to see the manner of a gamester's life, which I see is very miserable, and poor, and unmanly. And thence he took me to a dancing-school in Fleet Street, where we saw a company of pretty girls dance, but I do not in myself like to have young girls exposed to so much vanity. So to the Wardrobe, where I found my lady had agreed upon a lace for my wife at £6, which I seemed much glad of that it was no more, though in my mind I

Which was derived from the Italian Palagamio.

think it too much, and I pray God to keep me so to order myself and my wife's expenses, that no inconvenience in purse or honour follow this my prodigality."

"May 21st.-My wife and I to my Lord's lodging; where she and I stayed walking in Whitehall Garden. And in the Privy-garden saw the finest smocks and linen petticoats of my Lady Castlemaine's laced with rich lace at the bottom that ever I saw; and did me good to look at them. Sarah [Lord Sandwich's housekeeper] told me how the King dined at my Lady Castlemaine's, and supped, every day and night last week; and that the night that the bonfires were made for joy of the Queen's arrival, the King was there; but there was no fire at her door, though at all the rest of the doors almost in the street, which was much observed: and that the King and she did send for a pair of scales and weighed one another; and she, being with child, was said to be heaviest. But she is now a most disconsolate creature, and comes not out of door, since the King's going. But we went to the Theatre, to the French Dancing Mistress (Master), and there with much pleasure we saw and gazed upon Lady Castlemaine ; but it troubles us to see her look dejectedly, and slighted by people already. The play pleased us very well; but Lacy's part, the dancing mistress, the best in the world."

66

May 23rd.-My wife and I to the puppet play in Covent Garden, which I saw the other day, and indeed it is very pleasant."

Puppet-shows were greatly in vogue at the Restoration, and also in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. The reader will remember the farcical dénouement of Ben Jon

* The Duke of Southampton, born in the following May. VOL. I.

F

son's "Bartholomew Fair," which is connected with a performance of the drama of "Hero and Leander," by puppets in one of the booths there.

"Cokes.-These be players, minors indeed. Do you call these players ?" "Leatherhead.-They are actors, sir, and as good as any, none dispraised, for dumb shows: indeed, I am the mouth of them all. . . ."

"Cokes.-Well, they are civil company, I like 'em for that; they offer not to pun, nor jeer, nor break jests, as the great players do: and then, there goes not much charge to the feasting of them, or making them drunk, as to the other, by reason of their littleness."

In the early part of the eighteenth century "Paul's Puppet-Show" was one of the sights of London. It was much helped to its celebrity, no doubt, by Steele's notices of it in The Tatler (No. 16, May 15th, 1709).

"May 27th.-With my wife and the two maids and the boy took boat and to Fox-hall, where I had not been a great while. To the old Spring Garden; and then walked long, and the wenches gathered pinks. Here we stayed, and seeing that we could not have anything to eat but very dear, and with long stay, we went forth again without any notice taken of us, and so we might have done if we had had anything. Thence to the New one, where I never was before, which much exceeds the other; and here we also walked, and the boy crept through the hedge, and gathered abundance of roses, and after a long walk, passed out of doors as we did in the other place, and so to another house that was an ordinary house, and here we had cakes and powdered beef and ale, and so home again by water, with much pleasure."

On the 28th of May, 1667, Pepys writes :"By water to Fox-hall, and then walked in the Spring Gardens. A great deal of company, and the weather and

garden pleasant; and it is very cheap going thither, for a man may spend what he will, or nothing at all, all as one. But to hear the nightingale and the birds, and here fiddles and there a banjo, and here a jew's trump and there laughing, and there fine people walking, is mighty divertising."

Spring Garden derived its name from an ingenious bit of mechanism, which, on being touched by the foot, sent a shower of water over the bystanders. It was a favourite resort of the Londoners in the reign of Charles I., but during the Commonwealth the preference seems to have been given to the Mulberry Garden, on the site of the present Buckingham Palace. At the Restoration a strip of land, on the Lambeth bank of the Thames, was laid out as a public garden, and soon acquired a reputation which it retained down to our own time. From a manor called Fulke's Hall, which had belonged to Fulke de Breauté, King John's minister, came the name of Fox-hall, afterwards modified into Vauxhall.

"September 7th.-Meeting Mr. Pierce, the chirurgeon, he took me into Somerset House; and then carried me into the Queen-Mother's presence-chamber, where she was, with our Queen sitting on her left hand, whom I never did see before; and though she be not very charming, yet she hath a good, modest, and innocent look, which is pleasing. Here I also saw Madame Castlemaine, and, which pleased me most, Mr. Crofts [afterwards Duke of Monmouth], the King's bastard, a most pretty spark of about fifteen years old, who, I perceive, do hang much upon my Lady Castlemaine, and is always with her; and, I hear, the Queens both are mighty kind to him. By and by in

comes in the King, and anon the Duke and his Duchess; so that, they being altogether, was such a sight as I never could almost have happened to see with so much ease and leisure. They staid till it was dusk, and then went away; the King and his Queen, and my Lady Castlemaine, and young Crofts in one coach, and the rest in other coaches. Here were great store of great ladies, but very few handsome. The King and Queen were very merry; and he would have made the Queen-Mother believe that his Queen was with child, and said that she said so. And the young Queen answered, 'You lie,' which was the first English word that I ever heard her say: which made the King good sport; and he would have made her say in English, "Confess and be hanged.'"

"December 26th.-Hither came Mr. Battersby; and we falling into discourse of a new book of drollery in use, called Hudibras, I would needs go find it out, and met with it at the Temple: cost me 2s. 6d. But when I came to read it, it is so silly an abuse of the Presbiter knight going to the wars, that I am ashamed of it; and, by and by, meeting at Mr. Townsend's at dinner, I sold it to him for 18d."

[Mr. Pepys afterwards bought another copy, "it being certainly some ill-humour to be so against that which all the world cries up to be the example of wit; " and resolved to read it again, and see whether he could find the wit or no. But in this he did not succeed.]

"April 4th.-This being my feast-very merry at, before, and after dinner, and the course for that very dinner was great, and most neatly dressed by our own only maid. We had a fricassee of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton boiled, three carps in a dish, a great dish