556 LETTERS FROM ENGLAND. 



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 wanders 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 modest little cottage the favorite summer residence of 

 Lord John Russell, the use of which has been given him by his sove- 

 reign. A more unambitious looking home, and one better calcu- 

 lated 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 Boleyn 

 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. We fancy, 

 not without reason, in New- York, that we have a great city, and 

 that the introduction of Croton water, is so marvellous 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 of our beloved commercial metropolis over every city on 

 the globe, was our most amusing companion. I chanced to meet 

 him one afternoon 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 Lave attempted to describe to you. He threw up his 



