vm. 



THE LONDON PARKS. 



September, 1 860. 



MY DEAR SIR :— If my English lettera have told you mostly 

 of country places, and country life, it is not that I have beea 

 insensible to sight-seeing in town. London is a great world in it- 

 self. Ini 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 businesi^ 

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

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

 features. To an American' eye, accustomed to th6 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 buildiing, 

 and which mellows and softens all its lines and forms, is as delicious 

 to the sense of sight as ^e 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 aJl 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 alpost 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 ypuwitLsome of its lights, 



