ss in the days of his hot youth." Princess
Charlotte was born here. In 1811 the ceremony of conferring the regency
upon Prince George was enacted at Carlton House, and in the June
following the Prince gave a magnificent supper to 2,000 guests. In 1827
the house was pulled down. It stood right across the end of the present
Waterloo Place, where now a flight of steps lead into the park. At the
head of the steps is the York Column of granite, 124 feet high, designed
by Wyatt, and surmounted by a figure of the Duke of York, son of George
III.

One of the sights of London in the seventeenth century, was the garden
which lay between St. James's Park and Charing Cross, called Spring
Gardens. The place was laid out as a bowling-green; it had also butts,
a bathing-pond, a spring made to scatter water all around by turning a
wheel. There was also an ordinary, which charged 6s. for a dinner--then
an enormous price--and a tavern where drinking of wine was carried on
all day long. In the "Character of England," 1659, attributed to Evelyn,
the following account of Spring Gardens is found:

"The manner is as the company returned [from Hyde Park] to alight at the
Spring Gardens so called, in order to the Parke, as our Thuilleries is
to the Course; the inclosure not disagreeable, for the solemness of the
grove is broken by the warbling of the birds, as it opens into the
spacious walks at St. James's; but the company walk in it at such a
rate, you would think that all the ladies were so many Atalantas
contending with their wooers.... But fast as they run they stay there so
long as if they wanted not time to finish the race; for it is usual here
to find some of the young company till midnight; and the thickets of the
garden seem to be contrived to all advantages of gallantry; after they
have been refreshed with the collation, which is here seldom omitted, at
a certain cabaret, in the middle of this paradise, where the forbidden
fruits are certain trifling tarts, neats' tongues, salacious meats, and
bad Rhenish; for which the gallants pay sauce, as indeed they do at all
such houses throughout England."

After the Restoration the gardens were built over. Prince Rupert lived
here 1674-1682. Colley Cibber, actor and prolific dramatist, had a house
"near Bull's Head Tavern in Spring Gardens, 1711-14"; Sir Philip Warwick
and George Canning were also among the residents.

"Locket's ordinary, a house of entertainment much frequented by gentry,