188 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



their tortuous gravel walks, but he puts his foot upon 

 the grass at the risk of being insolently hailed by the 

 local police. I have even been called to order for re- 

 clining upon a seat under a tree in the Smithsonian 

 grounds. I must sit upright as in church. But in 

 Hyde Park or Regent's Park I could not only walk 

 upon the grass, but lie upon it, or roll upon it, or play 

 " one catch all " with children, boys, dogs, or sheep 

 upon it ; and I took my revenge for once for being 

 so long confined to gravel walks, and gave the grass 

 an opportunity to grow under my foot whenever I en- 

 tered one of these parks. 



This free and easy rural character of the London 

 parks is quite in keeping with the tone and atmos- 

 phere of the great metropolis itself, which in so many 

 respects has a country homeliness and sincerity, and 

 shows the essentially bucolic taste of the people ; con- 

 trasting in this respect with the parks and gardens 

 of Paris, which show as unmistakably the citizen 

 and the taste for art and the beauty of design and 

 ornamentation. Hyde Park seems to me the perfec- 

 tion of a city pleasure ground of this kind, because it 

 is so free and so thoroughly a piece of the country, 

 and so exempt from any petty artistic displays. 



In walking over Richmond Park I found I had 

 quite a day's work before me, as it was like traversing 

 a township ; while the great park at Windsor Castle, 

 being upwards of fifty miles around, might well make 

 the boldest pedestrian hesitate. My first excursion 

 was to Hampden Court, an old royal residence, where 



