VIII. 



THE LONDON PARKS. 



September, 1850. 



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 it- 

 self. Ink enough has, however, already been expended upon it to 

 fill the Grand Canal, and still it is a city which no one can under- 

 stand without seeing it. Its vastness, its grave aspect of business, 

 the grandeur of some parts, the poverty of others, the air of order, 

 and the taint of smoke, that pervade it every where, are its great 

 features. To an American eye, accustomed to the clear, pure, trans- 

 atlantic 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 Westminster 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 delicious 

 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 en- 

 tire 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, 



