a

a part of it.

being only separated from Kensington were part and parcel of the animalGardens by a ha-ha-seems to be only is Count D'Orsay. Close at his heels

On the declivity of this you may observe a youth in a Cheshill is a grove, in which are two cha- terfield hat, with a gold chain wound ly beate springs. There is a footpath twice round his neck, dipping into his across this road to Kensington Gar- waistcoat pocket, and coming out dens.

again. He joggles on his animal, and 66 On the south side of the Park are has an anxious expression of counte. very handsome barracks for the Royal nance, as if he were about to undergo Horse Guards. And on this side are some dreadful surgical operation, but two carriage roads to Kensington, one which doubtless is derived from an of which is better known by the name apprehension that the waistband of of Rotten Row.

his Sunday breeches is going to crack • These have become the resort of that is Fitz-Wiggins, son to old Wigthe fashionable world instead of the gins the retired cow-keeper of Canonring, and are much resorted to on bury Row, Islington. I know the felSundays.

low well. He is a gentility-monger; “ The open part of the Park was much spends all his time and all his money resorted to till lately for the field-days in smelling after fashionable people ; and reviews of the horse and foot but, with all his exertions, the highest guards, as also for those of the volun- approach he ever made to genteel teers, by which the sward of it was so society was getting into the Garrick much injured that it had become a Club. He has a good horse, you see, dry sandy plain, with scarcely a ves- and seems as much at home upon it tige of verdure. At present, however, as if he were mounted on one of his these exercises are forbidden, and the paternal cows. Alas, poor Wiggins ! surface of the Park is sown with grass There goes Count D'Orsay again. seeds, and covered with the mud taken The more I look at him, the more I from the bed of the Serpentine river, am surprised at the despotic authority which will restore it to its pristine that accomplished gentleman has long beauty."

exercised in matters of dress. He is This is truly a noble place-more faultless, to be sure ; I cannot say he extensive than the Green Park and the is overdressed, and it is equally clear park of St James's put together. It that he is not under-dressed. Still unites the gentle and varied diversity of there is something about him that does surface of the one, with the umbrageous not fulfil my preconceived idea of the shade of the other. The trees, too, rig-out of a perfect gentleman. His have dignity in their decay, and the coat-collar is too much detached, which tout ensemble is that of a park of some gives to the upper part of his figure noble house in the olden time-a an air of singularity-of a pretension thing not to be manufactured in a to unapproachable perfection-which, hurry. What a mob of people in of all things, your English gentleman carriages and on horseback; and what studies to avoid. The pantaloon, too, an admiring congregation of envious embracing the hoby round the sole, pedestrians, who console themselves and hardly exbibiting the toe, howfor the want of an equipage in finding ever well calčulated to throw out the fault with the equipages of others, and symmetrical leg in bold relief, gives to flattering themselves when they do the foot something of a slippered air. have a turn-out, they will do the trick But it is in the accompaniments of in a superior style! Dreadful thing his habit that the Count D'Orsay that gentlemen and ladies with so mainly excels. No man living has such much taste should be so much in want exquisite taste in the details. What of money, and find their chief conso. expression in that hat! What tone, lation in observing how very badly harmony, and keeping in that vest ! monied people lay their money out! What grace and elegance in the dra

That fine-looking man on the black pery of that stock! The Count is achorse-him, I mean, in the coat of knowledged to be, I had almost said, indescribable green-I say indescri- superhuman in stocks! Pray observe, bable, for it is neither bottle-green, if you please, sir, the style of the pea-green, apple-green, olive-green, Count's spur. That spur, let me tell grass-green, nor invisible-green—who you, was designed by the Count him. sits his horse sympathetically, as if he self. It was the admiration of every body, and the maker calculated on cut off! Ridiculous as that turn-out gaining a fortune by it. But would appears in our country, and in our you believe it, as soon as one pair had eyes, I can assure you that, on the been cast for the heels of the Count Prado of Madrid, the Corso of Rome, himself, he ordered the moulds, pat- or at the Parisian fête of Long Champs, terns, and drawings to be brought this attaché and his descending cab home to him; had them broken up would be considered machines of the before his face, and with his own hands very first fashion. committed the fragments to the flames! You see that slashing yellow cha

You observe that unimpeachable riot, with the pair of dark bays--close pony-phæton, drawn by two cream- in the rear of it you may observe a coloured ponies-- what simplicity - coach of a deep claret-colour-a fine

– what taste-such inexpensive ele- pair of bright bays under it, and the gance, you might say ! Notwith- coachman and footmen in pepper and standing which, that phæton has salt, with plain cockades that is one not been turned out of Long Acre of the royal carriages, and exactly the under two hundred and fifty guineas, thing that a royal carriage ought to and the ponies one hundred and fifty be—no cock's feathers, no lubberly the pair-not a speck you may per- footmen, no blazing armorial bearings ceive of silver or brass on the harness -no gold, in short, upon our ginger—not an atom of gold-lace on the bread. Close at the heels of the royal subdued and sober livery of the tiger equipage may be seen three in a gig -the equipage is not, you see, perch- —such a gig, and such a three !- Fitzed on wheels or hung on a perch_it Wiggins and the Frenchman are both reclines, as it were taking its ease, thrown into the shade. Hilloa! who and floats lightly and easily in perfect would have thought of seeing young equilibrium. The turn-out is, with- Capillaire, the fashionable wig-trimout doubt, the most elegant in the mer's son of Bond Street—there he ring—it attracts admiration by a stu- goes, however, at railway pace, on his dious endeavour to decline it, and be- half-guinea hack, making the best use longs, I think, to the Earl of Harring- he can of his ten-and-sixpence worth ton. To contrast with it, pray note of equestrian exercitation. Now they that continental cab, driven by the are all at a dead lock-the triple line man in a huge moustache-an attaché of wealth, fashion, and pretension has to the French embassy-did you ever come to a regular stand-still -We will -Long Acre would blush for such a have time enough to walk half round concern: you see the body of the ma- the circle before they are able to get chine is painted an odious chocolate on again. colour, picked out with broad stripes The stroll along the beach of that of white, that give it the appearance Cockney ocean the Serpentine, is deof being bound round the edges with lightful—the carriage-way is carefully penny tape, a blazing armorial bear- watered, and the heat of the summer's ing on every side, such as you see on day tempered by a refreshing breeze shabby hackney coaches - it is evi

- it is evi- from the river. There is, on the one dently ashamed of itself, too, for you side and the other, as George Robins observe it is making a desperate effort would say, a never-ending panorama to dive down head foremost between of moving scenery. Now are we opthe shafts, to counteract which centri- posite the receiving house of the Royal petal tendency is, without doubt, the Humane Society, and pause a moment proprietor's reason for mounting a to admire the aptitude of the device tiger behind, who, in loutishness and carved in marble over the door-a chesize, looks more like an unfledged rub endeavouring to relight, with his elephant-regard the harness, too, all breath, an extinguished lamp, with the brass and no leather. Who is that touching and beautiful motto, fellow in military uniform, joggling

Forsitan scintillula latet.” behind the cab on a waggoner's black Let us turn up this little path, and horse, with a couteau de chasse, and a make our way to the Chalybeate cock's feather in his cocked hata Springs, - I should rather field-marshal, doubtless, of the grand the site of the Chalybeate Springs army-no such thing, my dear sir, for they are long since dried simply a footman in disguise. Mercy up, and, like benefits conferred, are on us, assuredly our heads will be all forgotten. Here they were in this

acres.

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little glen, once the most beautiful and noble avenue we enter, by a foot gate, retired spot within the circumference of the Park, and would be so still, if

Kensington GARDENS, some military Goths—the Board of Which consisted originally, as we are Ordnance, I suspect had not dese- told by Pennant, of only twenty-six crated it by the erection of a very

Queen Anne added thirty ugly barrack—all barracks are ugly, acres, which were laid out by her garbut this particular barrack, being lo- dener, Mr Wise; but the principal adcated in a sweet pretty place, is super, ditions were made by the late Queen, latively ugly-we wonder the Board who took in near three hundred acres of Ordnance has not a little more out of Hyde Park, which were laid taste! A little further on, and we out by Bridgeman. They are now come to a couple of leafless old trees. three and a half miles in circumference. nature's own ruins-ivy-mantled, and The broad walk, which extends from carefully defended from the rude as- the palace along the south side of the saults of idle men and boys by an iron gardens, is in the spring a very fashionpaling - two venerable old cripples able promenade, especially on Sunday are they—what names they are known mornings. Kensington Gardens have by I am sure I know not—but this I been the subject of several poems, know, that I never look upon them one especially by Tickell, of which we without humming the old Scottish, would here insert some extracts did old-warld, old folks' tune of “ John space permit. The present extent of Anderson my jo."

these gardens is somewhere about Now, the classic bridge over the three hundred and thirty-six acres, Serpentine-a very neat fresh-water with eight acres of water, occupying bridge as you would wish to see in a a circular pond to the west of the summer-day-attracts ourarchitectural palace-an ugly edifice, as all our meoptics, and beneath its arches we catch tropolitan palatial edifices are—but on our picturesque retina small patches unpretending enough ; nor, unlike of the verdant green of Kensington its precious colleague in St James's Gardens, whither we are tending. Park, does it superadd impudence to

, We are assuredly in the country now? vulgarity. At this season of the year -no such thing ; for just at our nose Kensington Gardens look remarkably is a powder magazine, of an exploded well'; they have an air more park-like, order of architecture, that transports more secluded, than any of the other us back again to the piazza of Covent public walks of the metropolis, and Garden. Heaven sends fields and afford a more unbroken shelter from groves, hills and dales, wood and the noonday heat. Here a is solitude, water, and ever in the midst of these, a seclusion, as complete as can be wishthe devil sends one of his chosen archi- ed for in the immediate vicinity of a tects; or, what is ten times worse, the great city; the noise, confusion, and Board of Ordnance sends one of theirs, racket of the mighty Babylon close by, to dissolve the charm, and to load the is lost in the distance, save when the lovely earth with uglinesses not her booming bell of St Paul's is heard to

thunder forth the fleeting hour. The We are on the bridge of the Serpen- trees here are more numerous, more tine-over the keystone of the centre lofty, and cast a greater breadth of arch; and without affectation—that is, shade than in the Parks; but then, rewithout Cockney affectation—there are garded individually, they are comparafew points of view in the immediate tively insignificant. The grounds are vicinity of great cities more attractive skilfully laid out, partly in the Dutch, than this. To the east lies the whole partly in the English taste, which length of the Serpentine, and to the combination of the artificial formal, west extends the sweep of the same with the more natural irregular style, river as it bends towards Bayswater, when cleverly executed, forms the perwhere it enters the Park, with the gen- fection of landscape-gardening. This tly swelling banks rising on either union of grandeur and breadth of efside. The view from the high grounds fect with a certain degree of natural near Cumberland gate is also very fine, arrangement has been very well hit and the Queen's ride affords many off in these gardens-the long, unpleasing prospects to the right and broken, regular avenues of green left. From the termination of this sward, with the dense columnar

own!

masses of foliage between, have some- that is breathed over the scene, make thing majestic in their appearance ; it altogether superior to any thing the while the absence of statues, hermi vicinity of towns can afford to the eye tages, marble temples, bronze sarco- wearied with an universe of brick and phagi, and spouting monsters, relieve mortar. the scene from that constrained and In the fashionable season, when the artificial appearance that attends the military bands assemble here for pracvast majority of parks laid out in this tice, which they usually do on every style.

Tuesday and Friday, from four to six Our continental brethren carry this in the afternoon, near the bridge of adornment of their public walks to a the Serpentine, the concourse of faridiculous excess. One would imagine shionable people is immense-and that such places were intended as re- the scene altogether of great animatreats from the bustle of cities; but a tiorr. But it is time to proceed to stranger entering the gardens of the the only remaining lobe of the Lungs Tuileries, for example, so far from be- of London: therefore, leaving Kening solaced with the agreeable delu- sington Gardens by the Bayswater sion of retirement, finds himself intro. Gate, we make our way through a duced into the society of marble gen. neighbourhood that has sprung up, tlemen and ladies, dying gladiators, like a mushroom, in one night-by gold and silver fish, orange-trees stuck the way, where or when, does any in green gallipots, and tritons spew- body think, will London stop ?-we ing water in his face at every angle ; skirt the Great Western Railway staso that he begins to feel himself al- tion, enter Paddington, so to St together out of his element, and half John's Wood, and find ourselves passinclined to resign the privilege of the ing through Hanover Gate to the promenade to the courtly creations of outer circle of the magic pencil of Watteau, with

THE Regent's PARK, their laced pocket-holes, clouded canes, velvet embroidery, and ruffles of Point This estate of the Crown was ford'Espagne. In Kensington Gardens, merly the outer park attached to the on the contrary, the lounger is not royal mansion of Henry VIII. at obliged to be so much upon his good Marylebone, which was taken down behaviour; he can enjoy a stroll suffi- in the year 1790. It consists of 543 ciently retired for all reasonable pur- acres, and was granted by three Crown poses; and, if he does not object to leases, the family of Hinds being pos. good company, the broad walk

affords sessed of 9-24 parts of the property good company in abundance,---literary for a term of years, which expired ladies with the last new novel-cooing January 24th, 1806, the other 15-24ths turtles, squeezing the last drops of being possessed by the Duke of Portambrosia out of the expiring honey- land for a term of years, expiring Jamoon—and faded old gentlemen, in nuary 24th, 1811. sky-blue coats, virgin waistcoats, Isa- Soon after this, the then Commisbella-coloured « smalls," and black sioners of Woods and Forests contemgaiters, who emerge from their neat plated improvements of a more extensuburban villas of Kensington, Gore, sive kind than had originally been and Bayswater, to take the air, and thought of the long-cherished design sigh for the brocaded petticoats, high of the Crown being to convert the heeled shoes, hoops, and powdered Marylebone estate into a military toupees of half-a-century ago. farm, of which we find the following

The view from the centre of this notice in an early number of the broad walk, exactly in front of the Gentleman's Magazine :Palace, is one of the finest afforded

" The intended Military Park at Welany where in the vicinity of the me.

ling's farm, Marylebone, is nearly laid tropolis. The trees, drawn up in close

out. Two grand barracks are to be erect. column like a rifle brigade of his Ma

ed, one on each wing, spacious enough for jesty the Emperor of Brobdignage the reception of 3000 men; the whole is the vistas between, extending far away to be inclosed with a belt of forest-trees, into the shady distance—the verdure a considerable part of which is already of the sward, which

here more

planted, and on the outside of which will be luxuriant and unbroken than in the a circular drive, open to the public, to an Parks—the air of quiet and seclusion extent of four miles.”

NO. CCLXXXVI. VOL, XLVI.

P

This barbarous notion of covering cuses, his ornamental bridges over a lovely tract of land with barracks, puddles four feet wide, his Swiss cotand converting it into a grand parade tages, and his terraces crowned with ground, was long after altogetheraban- cupolas, that convey to the mind of doned ; and in 1811, when the Duke the spectator the idea of a grotesque of Portland's lease had expired, several giant in his dressing-gown and nighteminent architects were invited by cap. By far the most extensive and the Commissioners of Woods and varied view within the limits of this Forests to survey the Crown lands of delightful retreat, is that from the Marylebone Park, and, after consider- rising ground immediately above the ing the several documents communi. master's lodge of St Catharine's Hoscated to them, to report upon the pital, embracing to the northward the most advantageous and eligible me- gentle rise of Primrose Hill, behind thod of letting the property, “ always it, the thickly wooded Hampstead, and having in view the beauty of the me- its sister hill close to your feet, the tropolis, and the health and conveni. Babel of inarticulate sounds that greets ence of the public.”

your ears, indicates that modern Ark In pursuance of these instructions, of Noah-the Zoological Gardens. surveys were made, and plans sub- We have thus enumerated a very mitted by Mr White, Messrs Lever- few of the leading features, to borrow ton and Chawner, and of that archi- a phrase of the prince of auctioneers, tectural nuisance, Mr John Nash, of the Lungs of London-the great whose plans had the sole merit of vehicles of exercise, fresh air, health, being the plans of the surveyor to the and life to the myriads that congreOffice of Woods and Forests, and for gate in the great metropolis. We that sole reason were, of course, pre- have been sufficiently minute, we hope, ferred, and the plan carried into exe- without departing from our original cution, with slight alterations as it plan of non-interference with the pronow appears. Space will not permit vince of the guide-books, and yet not us to give a detailed description of the sufficiently discursive to disgust the beauties of the Regent's Park; we reader with a subject in a moral, ecomust, therefore, be content with a nomical, national, and salutary point slight sketch, or general survey, leav- of view, so deeply interesting. ing the tasteful perambulator to de- are surprised, we repeat, that this tect the minuter excellences for him- subject has not been taken up by self,

Although the newest of the abler pens-by Mr Jesse, for exam. Parks, this, even in its present imma- ple, one of the most natural, easy, and ture state, is the most beautiful of any, graceful writers who ever put pen to and will become more and more so paper on the subject of our parks and every succeeding year. It might with royal palaces-å worthy brother of propriety be called the Park of Re- the angle, too-one of Father Isaak's union, combining, as it does, all the quiet decent men, who fear God, hoexcellences of all the public walks of nour their king, love their neighbour, the Metropolis,- extent-variety of and peacefully go their ways a-fishing. prospect and of scenery-noble walks, We cannot help thinking the metroof imposing breadth and longitudinal politan parks would furnish a theme extent-a surface gently and pleasing, not unworthy the pen of this gentlely undulated - ornamental water- man, villas, encircled each by its little

paradise of pleasure-ground-and, for its

“ The apt historian of our royal plains.” years, a very considerable quantity of But we must not conclude without shade.

adverting once again to the moral, if The most beautiful portion of the we may so call it, of our descriptionPark is, as might be expected, that to the great object, towards the realiportion to the north, which is hardlyzation whereof we were incited to put interfered with by the hand of art, pen to paper on this subject. The total and where the natural disposition of destitution of the people of the east the ground has scope to show itself; end of the metropolis in the means of whereas, wherever the hand of Mr taking exercise, or gulping a mouthJohn Nash is marifest, beauty is at ful of " caller” air, must have pain once exchanged for artificial littleness, fully obtruded itself on every body as in his greater and his lesser cir. who is familiar with that terra incog

We

a