

MR. DOWNING'S LETTERS FROM ENGLAND. 



ferns, the surface gently undulating, and dotted with grand old oaks — extremely like what 

 you see on a still larger scale in Kentucky. Its solitude and seclusion, within sight of 

 London — are almost startling. The land is high, and from one side of it your eye wan- 

 ders over the valley of Richmond — with the Thames — here only a silvery looking stream 

 winding through it — a world-renowned view and one whose sylvan beauty it is impossible 

 to praise too highly. Just in this part of the Park, and commanding this superb view, 

 with the towers of Windsor Castle in the distance on one side, and the dome of St. Paul's 

 on the other, and all the antique sylvan seclusion of the old wood around it, stands a mo- 

 dest little cottage — the favorite summer residence of Lord John Russell, the use of 

 which has been given him by his sovereign. A more unambitious looking home, and one 

 better calculated to restore the faculties of an over-worked premier, after a day's toil in 

 Downing Street, it would be impossible to conceive. 



I drove through Richmond Great Park in the carriage of the Belgian minister, and his 

 accomplished wife, who was my cicerone, stopped the coachman for a moment near this 

 place, in order that she might point out to me an old oak that had a story to tell. " It 

 was here— just under this tree," she added, (her eyes gleaming slightly with womanly 

 indignation as she said it,) " that the cruel Henry stood, and saw with his own eyes, 

 the signal made from the Tower of London, (five miles off,) which told him that Anne 

 RoLETN was at that moment beheaded!" I thanked God that oak trees were longer lived 

 than bad monarchs, and that modern civilization would no longer permit such butchery in 

 a christian country. 



I will close this letter with only a single remark. AVe fancy, not without reason, in 

 New- York, that we have a great city, and that the introduction of Croton water, is so mar- 

 velous a luxury in the way of health, that nothing more need be done for the comfort of 

 half a million of people. In crossing the Atlantic, a young New-Yorker, who was rabidly 

 patriotic, and who boasted daily of the superiority ofour beloved commercial metropolis over 

 every city on the globe, was our most amusing companion. I chanced to meet him one af- 

 ternoon a few days after we landed, in one of the great Parks in London, in the midst of all 

 the sylvan beauty and human enjoyment, I have attempted to describe to you. He threw 

 up his arms as he recognised me, and exclaimed — " good heavens! what a scene, and / 

 took some Londoners to the steps of the City Hall last summer, to show them the Park of 

 New-York!" I consoled him with the advice to be less conceited thereafter in his cockney- 

 ism, and to show foreigners the Hudson and Niagara, instead of the City Hall and Bow- 

 ling Green. But the question may well be asked, is New-York really not rich enough, or 

 is there absolutely not land enough in America, to give our citizens public parks of more 

 than ten acres? Yours sincerely, A. J. D. 



