Nothing can be more striking to one who is accustomed to the little
inclosures called public parks in our American cities, than the spacious,
open grounds of London. I doubt, in fact, whether any person fully
comprehends their extent, from any of the ordinary descriptions of them,
until he has seen them or tried to walk over them. You begin at the east
end of St. James's Park, and proceed along its graveled walks, and its
colonnades of old trees, among its thickets of ornamental shrubs carefully
inclosed, its grass-plots maintained in perpetual freshness and verdure by
the moist climate and the ever-dropping skies, its artificial sheets of
water covered with aquatic birds of the most beautiful species, until you
begin almost to wonder whether the park has a western extremity. You reach
it at last, and proceed between the green fields of Constitution Hill,
when you find yourself at the corner of Hyde Park, a much more spacious
pleasure-ground. You proceed westward in Hyde Park until you are weary,
when you find yourself on the verge of Kensington Gardens, a vast extent
of ancient woods and intervening lawns, to which the eye sees no limit,
and in whose walks it seems as if the whole population of London might
lose itself. North of Hyde Park, after passing a few streets, you reach
the great square of Regent's Park, where, as you stand at one boundary the
other is almost undistinguishable in the dull London atmosphere.
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