supported an aged father by her industry and her talents. Her beauty and her virtue captured the heart of the celebrated and eccentric Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, who privately married her toward the close of his long life. Their marriage was not acknowledged till the year 1735, but, as many as twelve years previous to its announcement, we find Lord Peterborough horsewhipping a foreign singer, Senescino, at a rehearsal, for some offence which he had given to his future countess. Of the year in which they were married we have no record; indeed, it was only when broken down by disease, and when harassed by her repeated refusals to live under the same roof with him, unless he acknowledged her as his wife, that Lord Peterborough was induced to divulge his secret to the world. Even when he proclaimed his weakness, it was in a very characteristic manner. He went one evening to the rooms at Bath, where a servant had previously received orders to exclaim, in a distinct and audible voice, "Lady Peterborough's carriage waits." Every lady of rank and fashion, we are told, immediately rose, and offered their congratulations to the new countess. Gay, in his "Epistle to William Pulteney," has celebrated the vocal powers of the beautiful songstress:

"O soothe me with some soft Italian air,
Let harmony compose my tortured ear;
When Anastasia's voice commands the strain,
The melting warble thrills through every vein;

Thought stands suspended, silence pleased attends,
While in her notes the heavenly choir descends."

It is in this square that Smollet makes Matthew Bramble and his sister, with Humphrey Clinker and Winifred Jenkins, take up their residence.

CHAPTER II.

THE GREEN PARK AND HYDE PARK.

The Green Park Duel between the Earl of Bath and Lord Hervey - Hyde Park in the Reigns of Henry the Eighth, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Anne, Cromwell, and Charles the Second Famous Duel between Lord Mohun and the Duke of Hamilton-M'Lean and Belchier the Highwaymen Mysterious Incident to the Duke of Marlborough.

PREVIOUS to the Restoration, the site of the Green Park was occupied by meadows, and it is to Charles the Second that the children who fly kites, and the nursery-maids who make love, are indebted for its being converted into an appanage of St. James's Palace. With the exception of its being the scene of a remarkable duel between the celebrated minister, Pulteney, afterward Earl of Bath, and the scarcely less celebrated John, Lord Hervey, I am not aware that the Green Park possesses any particular feature of interest. In 1730 there appeared in print a pamphlet, entitled "Sedition and Defamation Displayed," which the world in general attributed to Lord Hervey, and which contained a violent personal attack on Pulteney. This pamphlet was replied to by the latter, who, believing it to be the production of Lord Hervey,

47

vomited forth an acrimonious attack on its presumed author. Alluding to the well-known effeminate appearance and habits of Lord Hervey, Pulteney speaks of his opponent as a thing half man and half woman, and dwells malignantly on those personal infirmities, produced by suffering and disease, which Pope afterward introduced with no less acrimony, but with increased wit, in his celebrated character of "Sporus."

Immediately on the production of the offensive pamphlet, Lord Hervey sent to Pulteney, inquiring whether he was correct in presuming him to be his maligner? To this Pulteney replied that, whether or no he was the author of the "Reply," he was ready to justify and stand by the truth of any part of it, "at what time and wherever Lord Hervey pleased." "This last message," writes Thomas Pelham to Lord Waldegrave, "your lordship will easily imagine was the occasion of the duel; and, accordingly, on Monday last, between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, they met in the Upper St. James's Park, behind Arlington Street, with their two seconds, who were Mr. Fox and Sir J. Rushout. The two combatants were each of them slightly wounded, but Mr. Pulteney had once so much the advantage of Lord Hervey that he would infallibly have run my lord through the body if his foot had not slipped, and then the seconds took an occasion to part them; upon which Mr. Pulteney embraced Lord Hervey, and ex

pressed a great deal of concern at the accident of their quarrel, promising, at the same time, that he would never personally attack him again, either with his mouth or his pen. Lord Hervey made him a bow, without giving him any sort of answer, and, to use the common expression, thus they parted." It is somewhat singular that Lady Hervey, the beautiful and celebrated Mary Lepel, should have afterward built and resided in a house in the Green Park immediately overlooking the spot where her husband had so narrow an escape from the sword of Lord Bath.

In the time of Henry the Eighth, Hyde Park formed part of a manor belonging to the abbot and monks of Westminster; and, in a survey of church lands, taken in the 26th year of the reign of that monarch, it is styled Manerium de Hyde, and is valued at £14. Although there is some reason to believe that it was formed into a park while still in possession of the monks of Westminster, we have no positive certainty of its having been enclosed till the reign of Edward the Sixth, when we have a record of George Roper having been appointed keeper, with a salary of sixpence a day!

Previous to the reign of Queen Anne, Hyde Park was of much larger extent than it is at the present time. In 1705, that princess curtailed it of thirty acres, which she added to the gardens of Kensington Palace, which a few years previously