MR. DOWNING'S LETTERS FROM ENGLAND. 



not one American in fifty that visits Hyde Park, ever gets far enough into the depths of its 

 enjoyment to explore this avenue in Kensington Gardens. 



No carriages or horses are permitted in Kensington Gardens, but its broad glades and 

 shadowy lawns, are sacred to pedestrians, and are especially the gambol-fields of thou- 

 sands of lovely children, who, attended by their nurses, make a kind of infant Arcadia 

 of these solemn old groves of the monarch of Dutch tastes. Even the dingy old brick 

 Palace of Kensington, which overlooks one side of the great lawn, cannot chase away the 

 bright dimples from the rosy faces of the charming children one sees here, and the symbols of 

 natural aristocracy — beauty and intelligence, set upon these young faces, were to my eyes 

 a far more agreeable study than those of accident, birth, and fortune, which are so gaudi- 

 ly blazoned forth in Hyde Park. 



My London friend, who evidently enjoys our astonishment at the vastness of the London 

 Parks, and the apparent display and real enjoyment they minister to, calculates that not 

 less than 50,000 persons have been out, on foot, on horseback, or in carriages, this after- 

 noon, and adds that upon review days, or other occasions of particular brilliancy, he has 

 known 200,000 persons to be in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens at once. 



You may be weary of Parks to day, but I shall not allow you to escape me without a 

 glance at Regent's Park, another link in the rural scenery of this part of London. Yes, 

 here are three hundred and thirty six acres more of lawn, ornamental plantations, drives 

 ai:.d carriage roads. Pvegent's Park has a younger look than any of the others in the West 

 end of London, having only been planted about twenty-five or thirty years — but it is a 

 beautiful surface, containing a great variety of different scenes within itself. Here are, 

 for instance, the Royal Botanic Garden, "with its rich collection of plants, and its beauti- 

 ful flower-shows, which I have already described to you; and the Zoological Garden, some 

 twenty acres in extent, where you may see almost every living animal as nearly as 

 possible in the same circumstances as in its native country. Over the lawns walk the 

 giraffe and camel -leopard, led by Arabs in oriental costume; among the leafy avenues you 

 see elephants waddling along with loads of laughing, half-frightened children on their 

 backs; down in a deep pool of water you peer upon the sluggish hippopotamus ; you gaze 

 at the soft eyes of the gazelle as she feeds in her little private paddock, and you 

 feed the black swans that are floating along with innumerable other rare aquatic birds, 

 upon the surface of glassy lakes of fresh water. And " the Zoological" is just as full of 

 people as Hyde Park, though of a totally different appearance — many students in natural 

 history, some fashionable loungers, chiefly women, more curious strangers, and most 

 of all, boys and girls, feeding their juvenile appetite for the marvellous, by seeing the less 

 astonished animals fed. 



And whose are those pretty country residences that you see in the very midst of another 

 part of Regent's Park — beautiful Italian villas and ornamental cottages, embowered in trees 

 of their own, and only divided from the open park by a light railing and belts of shrub- 

 bery? These are the villas of certain favored nobles, who have, at large cost, realised, as 

 you see, the perfection of a residence in town, viz: a country-house in the midst of a great 

 park, which is itself in the midst of a great city. In these favored sites the owners have 

 the luxury of quiet, and rural surroundings, usually confined to the country, with the 

 whole of the great world of May Fair and politics within ten or twenty minutes walk. 



And now, having been through more than a thousand acres of park scener}'-, and wit- 

 nessed the enjoyments of tens of thousands of persons of all classes, to whom these parks 

 open from sunrise to nine o'clock at night, you will naturally ask me if these luxuries 

 holly confined to the West End of London. By no means. In almost all parts of 



