MR. DOWNING'S LETTERS FROM ENGLAND. 



MR. DOWNING'S LETTERS FROM ENGLAND. 



My Dear Sir — If my English letters have told you mostly of country places, and 

 country life, it is not that I have been insensible to sight-seeing in town. London is a great 

 world in itself. Ink enough has, however, already been expended upon it to fill the Grand 

 Canal, and still it is a city which no one can understand without seeing it. Its vastness, 

 its grave aspect of bu-siness, the grandeur of some parts, the poverty of others, the air of 

 order, and the taint of smoke, that pervade it everywhere, are its great features. To an 

 American eye, accustomed to the clear, pure, transatlantic atmosphere, there is, at first, 

 something really repulsive in the black and dingy look of almost all buildings, whether 

 new or old, (not painted within the last month.) In some of the oldest, like Westmins- 

 ter Abbey, it is an absolute covering of dirty soot. That hoary look of age which belongs 

 to a time-honored building, and which mellows and softens all its lines and forms, is as deli- 

 cious to the sense of sight as the tone of old pictures, or the hue of old wine. But there 

 is none of this in the antiquity of London. You are repelled by the sooty exterior of all 

 the old facades, as you would be by that of a chimney-sweep who has made the circuit 

 of fifty flues in a morning, and whose outer man would almost defy an entire hydropathic 

 institution. 



If I have shown you the dark side of the picture of the great Metropolis, first, let me 

 hasten to present you with some of its lights, which made a much stronger impression 

 upon me. I mean the grand and beautiful parks of London. 



If everything one sees in England leads one to the conviction that the English do not, 

 like the French and Germans, possess the genius of high art, there is no denying that they 

 far surpass all other nations in a profound sentiment of nature. Take, for example, the 

 West end of London, and what do you see there? ^lagniflcent palaces, enormous piles 

 of dwellings, in the shape of "terraces," "squares," and "places" — the same costly 

 town architecture that you find everywhere in the better portions of populous and wealthy 

 capitals. But if you ask me what is the peculiar and distinguishing luxury of this part 

 of London, I answer, in its holding the country in its lap. In the midst of London lie, in 

 an almost connected series, the great parks. Hyde Park, Regent's Park, St. James' and 

 Green Parks. These names are almost as familiar to you as the Battery and Washington 

 Square, and I fear you labor under the delusion that the former are only an enlarged edi- 

 tion of the latter. Believe me, you have fallen into as great an error as if you took the 

 " Brick meeting-house" for a suggestion of St. Peters. The London Parks are actually like 

 districts of open country — meadows and fields, country estates, lakes and streams, gar- 

 dens and shrubberies, with as much variety as if you were in the heart of Cambridgeshire, 

 and as much seclusion in some parts, at certain hours, as i( you were on a farm in the in- 

 terior of Pennsylvania. And the whole is laid out and treated, in the main, with a broad 

 and noble feeling of natural beauty, quite the reverse of what you see in the public parks 

 of the continental cities. This makes these parks doubly refreshing to citizens tired of 

 straight lines and formal streets, while the contrast heightens the natural charm. Unac- 

 customed to this breadth of imitation of nature — this creating a piece of wide-spread 

 country large enough to shut out for the time all trace of the houses, though actually in 

 the midst of a city, an American is always half inclined to believe, (notwithstanding the 

 abundance of evidence to the contrary,) that the London Parks are a bit of the native 

 country, surprised and fairly taken prisoner by the outstretched arms of this giant of 

 n cities. 

 James' Park and Green Park are enormous pieces of real pleasure-ground scenery 



No. VI. 3^ 



