550 LETTERS FROM ENGLAND. 



the dramatis person^, that you will hardly identify it as the locale 

 of the solitary country ramble you took in the morning. 



It is half past four in the afternoon, and the fashionable world 

 (who dine at seven all over England) is now taking its morning air- 

 ing. If you will sit down on one of these solid-looking seats under 

 the shadow of this large elm, you will see such a display of equi- 

 page, pass you in the cousre of a single hour, as no other part of the 

 world can parallel. This broad, well-macadamized carriage-drive, 

 which makes a circuit of some four or five miles in Hyde Park, is, 

 at this moment, fairly filled with private carriages of all degrees. 

 Here are heavy coaches and four, with postilions and footmen, and 

 massive carnages emblazoned with family crests and gay with all 

 the brilliancy of gold and crimson liveries ; yonder superb barouche 

 with eight spirited horses and numerous outriders, is the royal 

 equipage, and as you lean forward to catch a glimpse of the sov- 

 ereign, the close coach of the hero of Waterloo, the servants with 

 cockades in their hats, dashes past you the other way at a rate so 

 rapid that you doubt if he who rides within, is out merely for an 

 airing. Yonder tasteful turn-out with liveries of a peculiar delicate 

 mulberry, with only a single tall figure in the coach, is the Duke of 

 Devonshire's. Here is the carriage of one of the foreign ambassa- 

 dors, less showy and lighter than the English vehicles, and that 

 pretty phaeton drawn by two beautiful blood horses, is, you see, 

 driven by a woman of extraordinary beauty, with extraordinary 

 skill. She is quite alone, and behind her sits a footman with his 

 arms folded, his face as grave and solemn as stones that have ser- 

 mons in them. As you express your surprise at the air of conscious 

 " grace with which the lady drives," your London friend quietly re- 

 marks, " Yes, but she is not a lady." Unceasingly the carriages 

 roU by, and you are less astonished at the numberless superb equi- 

 pages or the beauty of the horses, than at the old-world air of the 

 footmen in gold and silver lace, gaudy liveries, spotless linen and 

 snowy silk stockings. Some of the grand old coachmen in full- 

 powdered wigs, decked in all the glory of laced coats and silken 

 calves, held the ribbons with such a conscisus air of imposing 

 grandeur that I willingly accepted them as the tree-pceonias, the 

 most blooming blossoms of this parterre of equipage. It seemed 



