“Here a well-polished Mall gives us the joy
To see our Prince his matchless force employ.
No sooner had he touch’d the flying ball
But ’tis already more than half the Mall.”[323]
When Pepys stopped to have a talk with the keeper of the Mall—who was “sweeping of it” at the moment—he examined with interest its earthen flooring, spread with powdered cockle-shells. Evelyn, on the other hand, cared more about the birds and beasts that inhabited the Park—the “deare of severall countries,” the guinea-fowl and Arabian sheep; the pelican, and the melancholy waterfowl brought by the Russian Ambassador from Astracan; the Solan geese, and the pet crane with a real wooden leg—“made by a soldier.” Waller has described St. James’s Park “as lately improved by his Majesty”—
“Methinks I see the love that shall be made,
The lovers walking in that amorous shade;
The Gallants dancing by the riverside—
They bathe in summer and in winter slide.
Methinks I hear the music in the boats,