PALL MALL, THE GAME AND THE STREET. PALL MALL is an olden game, which, not many years since, was believed to have been first played in the metropolis, in the Mall of St. James's Park; but this belief was of twofold error; the Park avenue was thought to have been named from the game, which was played in "the spacious street between the Haymarket, N. E. of St. James's-street, S. W.," in the name of which we have preserved the entire name of the game, Pall Mall. Charles II. caused the Mall in the Park to be made for playing the game, which was a fashionable amusement in his reign; but it was introduced into England much earlier, and was played in the Park when the original alley had grown into a street, and had actually taken the name of the game itself. In Sir Robert Darlington, a Method for Travel, 4to, 1598, Pall-Mall is described as an exercise of France, which the author marvels had not been introduced into England; and in A French Garden for English Ladies, 8vo, 1621, it is described as a French game. Blount, in his Glossographie, edit. 1670, says, "this game was heretofore used in the long alley near St. James's, and vulgarly called Pall-Mall." The name, however, occurs much earlier ; for King James I., in his Basilicon Doron, recommends "Palle-Malle" as a field-game for the use of his eldest son, Prince Henry. In a Crown Survey, dated 1650, we find a piece or parcel of pasture ground, called "Pell-Mell Close," part of which was planted with appletrees, where Pepys stole apples when a boy; and Apple-tree Yard exists to this day, in York-street, St. James's-square. In the above document are also named 140 elm-trees, standing on both sides of Pall-Mall Walk; Faithorne's plan, 1658, shows a row of trees on the north side; and the name of Pall-Mall, as a street, occurs in the rate books of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields under the year 1656. Pepys mentions the game : "2nd April, 1661; to St. James's-park, where I saw the Duke of York playing at Pele-Mele, the first time I ever saw the sport." Nares says the name is derived from paile maille, French, at which word Cotgrave thus describes the game as, "wherein a round box bowle is, with a mallet, struck through a high arch of yron (standing at either end of an ally), one which he that can do at the fewest blowes, wins." A drawing of the time of Charles II, engraved in Smith's Antiquities of Westminster, and of late in John Carter's Westminster, shows the above arrangement for playing the game. Here Charles and his courtiers often played: the earth was mixed with powdered cockleshells to make it bind; " which, however," says Pepys, "in dry weather turns to dust, and deads the ball." Waller has this courtly reference to the place: Here a well-polished Mall gives us the joy, Nares considers the place for playing to have been called the mall, and the stick employed pale-mail; so it appears from the French Garden for English Ladies, 1621: "If one had paille-mails, it were good to play in this alley, for it is of a reasonable good length, straight, and even. And Digby, On the Soul, has " a stroke with a pailmail bettle upon a bowl, makes it fly from it." Evelyn (1664) more than once speaks of a Pall-Mall as a place for playing in: "Sunday, being May Day, we walked up into the Pall-Mall, very long, and nobly shaded with tall trees;" at Tours he mentions "the Mall," where "we played a party of two;" and at Lyons, a Pall-Mall." The name of Mall is given to avenues and walks, in other countries, as at Utrecht, in Holland; near London, are the Upper and Lower Malls, at Hammersmith. 66 The more reasonable derivation we take to be from palla, a ball; and maglia, a mallet; or the latter may be the word mall (used by Spenser), from the Latin malleus; or the shipwright's maull.* We now come to a more direct evidence of the actual form of the playthings, as well as the locality in which the game was played. In 1854 were found in the roof of the house of the late Mr. B. L. Vulliamy, No. 68, Pall-mall, a box containing four pairs of the mailes, or mallets, and one ball, such as were formerly used for playing the game of PallMall near the site of the above house, or in the Mall of the St. James's Park. Each maile is 4 feet in length, and is made of lance-wood; the head is slightly curved, and measures outwardly 5 inches, the inner curve being 4 inches; the diameter of the maile-ends is 2 inches, each shod with a thin iron hoop; the handle, which is very elastic, is bound with white leather to the breadth of two hands, and terminated with a collar of jagged leather. The ball is of box-wood, 21⁄2 inches in diameter. The pair of mailes and a ball, here engraved, have been presented to the British Museum by Mr. George Vulliamy. BALL AND MALLETS FOR PLAYING THE GAME OF PALL MALL. * A Correspondent of Notes and Queries, No. 79, notices that the crest of the house of Maille, which contributed to the Crusades one of its bravest champions, is a mailed arm and hand, the latter grasping a mallet. It appears that Maul is a provincial name for a large hammer, or beetle, & wooden hammer for driving hedge-stakes. Spenser has With mighty mall The monster mercilesse him made to fall.-Faerie Queene, i. 8. Hence, the word malled, and mauled, roughly handled. It should be added that Mr. B. L. Vulliamy was born in the above house, and died here in January, 1854, aged 74 years; and here his family, who were clockmakers to the sovereign in five reigns, lived before him for 130 years, thus carrying us beyond the date of Pepys seeing Paille-Maille first played. What a host of gay celebrities haunt the memories of Old Pall Mall. Here, in 1689, lived "the Lady Griffin, who was seized for having treasonable letters put into the false bottoms of two large brandy bottles," in the first year of William the Third's reign. Gay thus celebrates the modish street of his time : : O bear me to the paths of fair Pall-Mall! Safe are thy pavements, grateful is thy smell! At distance rolls the gilded coach, Nor sturdy carmen on thy walks encroach; No lets would bar thy ways were chairs deny'd, The soft supports of laziness and pride; Shops breathe perfumes, through sashes ribbons glow, The mutual arms of ladies and the beau. In gay bachelor's chambers, here lived Beau Fielding, Steel's "Orlando the Fair;" here he was married to a supposed lady of fortune, brought to him in a mourning-coach and widow's weeds, which led to his trial for bigamy. Fielding's namesake places Nightingale and Tom Jones in Pall-Mall, when they leave the lodgings of Mrs. Miller in Bond-street. Lætitia Pilkington kept for a short time in Pall Mall, a pamphlet and a print-shop. At the sign of "Tully's Head," Robert Dodsley, formerly a lady's footman, with the profits of a volume of his poems and a comedy (published through the kindness of Pope), opened a shop in 1735; and here he published his Annual Register, Economy of Human Life, and Sterne's Tristram Shandy. "Tully's Head" was the resort of Pope, Chesterfield, Lyttelton, Shenstone, Johnson, and Glover; Horace Walpole, the Wartons, and Edmund Burke. At the corner of St. Alban's-street lived Gilray the caricaturist, when assistant to Holland, the printseller. In a house opposite Market-lane, the "Royal Academy of Art" met, from the time of their obtaining the patronage of George III. until their removal to Somerset House, in 1771. Thenceforth, Pall Mall became noted for its abodes of Art; here rose Alderman Boydell's Shakspeare Gallery, for which Reynolds, Northcote, and West painted; and Banks sculptured. Next came the British Institution; and nearly opposite, at No. 100, lived Mr. Angerstein, whose pictures were bought for the nation, and were shown here before their removal to the National Gallery; and at No. 50 died Mr. Robert Vernon, who bequeathed to the country his pictures of the English School, which were for a short time exhibited in his house. It would occupy more space than we can spare to tell how the avenue of elms in which Paille Maille was first played, rose into a stately street, from three or four houses at the east end of the line of road in 1560; how a century later it became celebrated for its taverns-one of which, "Wood's at the Pell-Mell," was a haunt of the gay Pepys; and how the M place became a noted duelling-ground. Dr. Sydenham died there in 1689, at his house next "the Golden Pestle and Mortar,” which sign remained to our day over an apothecary's shop upon the north side of the street. Another old sign, "the Golden Ball," lasted to our time; but "the Golden Door" and "the Barber's Pole" have disappeared. Of Sydenham's residence here, Cunningham relates an anecdote told by Mr. Fox to Mr. Rogers,-that Sydenham was sitting at his window, looking on the Mall, with his pipe in his mouth and a silver tankard before him, when a fellow made a snatch at the tankard and ran off with it. Nor was he overtaken (said Fox) before he got among the bushes in Bondstreet, where they lost him." Nell Gwyn lived in 1670, "on the east end, north side;" and from 1671 to her death in 1687, in a house on the south side, with a garden towards the Park: it was upon a mount in this garden that "the impudent comedian" stood to hold her "familiar discourse" with Charles II., who stood "on ye green walk" under the wall. This scene, as described by Evelyn, has been cleverly painted by Mr. E. M. Ward, R.A. The site of Nell's house is now occupied by No. 79, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Eastward of Nell Gwyn's lived Sir William Temple, the Hon. Robert Boyle, and Bubb Dodington; and on the south side, Doctor Barrow, and Lady Southesk, the celebrated Countess of De Grammont's Memoirs. Nearly opposite the south-west corner of the Opera-house, “Thomas Thynne, Esq., on Sunday (Feb. 12th, 1681), was most barbarously shot with a musketoon in his coach, and died next day." The instigator was Count Koningsmark, in hopes of gaining Lady Elizabeth Ogle, the rich heiress, to whom Thynne was either married or contracted. Three of the ruffians were tried at the Old Bailey, found guilty, and hanged at the spot whereon the murder was committed. Borosky, "who did the murther," was hung in chains beyond Mile End Town; the count was tried as an accessory, but was acquitted. The assassination is sculptured upon Thynne's monument in Westminster Abbey. Defoe describes the Pall-mall of his time (1703) as "the country residence of all strangers, because of its vicinity to the Queen's Palace, the Park, the Parliament-house, the theatres, the chocolate and coffee houses, where the best company frequent." However, the street became early noted for its taverns, which we consider to have been Pepys's "houses for clubbing," among which was "Wood's in the Pell Mell." Here was Almack's Gaming Club, where the play was only for rouleaus of 50%. each, and generally there was 10,0007. in specie on the table. The players began by pulling off their embroidered clothes, and put on frieze greatcoats, or turned their coats inside outwards for luck. They put on pieces of leather (such as are worn by footmen when they clean the knives) to save their lace ruffles; and to guard their eyes from the light, and prevent tumbling their hair, wore high-crowned straw hats with broad brims, and adorned with flowers and ribbons; and masks to conceal their emotions when they played at quinze. Each gamester had a small, |