EXPULSION OF THE BOOKS 85 



sweetness, if such a feeling did not have its 

 bitter opposite and correlative. 



In conclusion of this in part mournful 

 chapter I will relate a little experience met 

 with in Kensington Gardens, seventeen years 

 ago. I was in bad health at the time, with no 

 prospect of recovery, and had been absent from 

 London. It was a bright and beautiful morning 

 in October, the air summer-like in its warmth, 

 and, thinking how pleasant my favourite green 

 and wooded haunt would look in the sunshine, 

 I paid a visit to Kensington Gardens. Then I 

 first saw the great destruction that had been 

 wrought ; where the grove had stood there was 

 now a vast vacant space, many scores of felled 

 trees lying about, and all the ground trodden 

 and black, and variegated with innumerable 

 yellow chips, which formed in appearance an 

 irregular inlaid pattern. 



As I stood there idly contemplating the sawn- 

 off half of a prostrate trunk, my attention was 

 attracted to a couple of small, ragged, shrill- 

 voiced urchins, dancing round the wood and 

 trying to get bits of bark and splinters off, one 

 with a broken chopper for an implement, the 



