THE LONDON PARKS. 553 



persons have been out, on foot, on horseback, or in carnages, this 

 afternoon, 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 

 and carriage roads. Regent'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, con- 

 taining a great variety of different scenes within itself. Here are, 

 for instance, the Royal Botanic Garden, with its rich collection of 

 plants and its beautiful 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 or cameleopard, 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 cu- 

 rious 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 

 shrubbery ? These are the villas of certain favored nobles, who have 

 at large cost realized, as you see, the perfection of a residence in 

 town, viz., a country-house in the midst of a great park, which is 



