With the World's Great Travellers Volume Iii Part 3

The entire circ.u.mference of Hyde Park is covered with houses of this sort, but finer, and those in the midst of London retain a country look.

Each stands detached in its square of turf and shrubs, has two stories in the most perfect order and condition, a portico, a bell for the tradespeople, a bell for the visitors, a bas.e.m.e.nt for the kitchen and the servants, with a flight of steps for the service; very few mouldings and ornaments; no outside sun-shutters; large, clear windows which let in plenty of light; flowers on the sills and at the portico; stables in a mews apart, in order that their odors and sight might be kept at a distance; all the external surface covered with white, s.h.i.+ning, and varnished stucco; not a speck of mud or dust; the trees, the turf, the flowers, the servants, prepared as if for an exhibition of prize products.

How well one can picture the inhabitant after seeing his sh.e.l.l! In the first place, it is the Teuton who loves nature, and who needs a reminder of the country; next, it is the Englishman who wishes to be by himself on his staircase as in his room, who could not endure the promiscuous existence of our huge Parisian cages, and who, even in London, plans his house as a small castle, independent and enclosed.

Besides, he is simple, and does not desire external display; on the other hand, he is exacting in the matter of condition and comfort, and separates his life from that of his inferiors. The number of such houses at the Westend is astonis.h.i.+ng. The rent is nearly five hundred pounds; from five to seven servants are kept; the master expends from twelve to twenty-four hundred pounds a year. There are ten of these fortunes and these lives in England to every one in France.

The impression is the same when visiting the parks; the taste, the area are quite different from what is the case among us. St. James's Park is a genuine piece of country, and of English country; huge old trees, real meadows, a large pond peopled with ducks and water-fowl; cows and sheep, in an enclosed s.p.a.ce, fed on the gra.s.s, which is always fresh. There are even sheep in the narrow green border that surrounds Westminster Abbey; these people love the country in their hearts. It is sufficient to read their literature from Chaucer to Shakespeare, from Thomson to Wordsworth and Sh.e.l.ley, to find proofs of this. What a contrast to the Tuileries, the Champs-Elysees, the Luxembourg! As a rule, the French garden, that of Louis XIV., is a room or gallery in the open air, wherein to walk and converse in company; in the English garden, such as they have invented and propagated, one is better alone; the eyes and the mind converse with natural things. We have arranged a park on this model in the Bois de Boulogne; but we have committed the blunder of placing therein a group of rocks and waterfalls; the artifice is discovered at a glance, and offends; English eyes would have felt it.

[A description of Regent's Park follows, with some words on the English love of out-door exercise. Piccadilly and Hyde Park are next mentioned.]

Hyde Park is the largest of them all, with its small rivulet, its wide greensward, its sheep, its shady walks, resembling a pleasure park suddenly transported to the centre of a capital. About two o'clock the princ.i.p.al alley is a riding-ground; there are ten times more gentlemen and twenty times more ladies on horseback than in the Bois de Boulogne on its most frequented days; little girls and boys of eight ride on ponies by the side of their father; I have seen ample and worthy matrons trolling along. This is one of the luxuries. Add to it that of having servants. For instance, a family of three persons which I visited keeps seven servants and three horses. The mother and daughter gallop in the park daily; they often pay visits on horseback; they economize in other things,--in theatre-going, for example; they go but seldom to the theatre, and when they do it is to a box which has been presented to them. This vigorous exercise appears indispensable for health; young girls and ladies come here even when it rains....

From five to seven o'clock is the review of ladies' dresses. Beauty and ornamentation abound, but taste is wanting. The colors are outrageously crude and the forms ungraceful; crinolines too distended and badly distended, in geometrical cones or bunched, green flounces, embroideries, flowered dresses, quant.i.ties of floating gauze, packets of falling or frizzed hair; crowning this display tiny embroidered and imperceptible bonnets. The bonnets are too much adorned; the hair, too s.h.i.+ny, presses closely on the temples; the small mantle or casaque falls formless to the lower part of the back, the petticoat expands prodigiously, and all the scaffolding badly joined, badly arranged, variegated and labored, cries and protests with all its gaudy and overdone colors. In the suns.h.i.+ne, especially, at Hampton Court the day before yesterday, among the shopkeepers' wives, the absurdity was at its height; there were many violet dresses, one being of a wild violet clasped round the waist with a golden band, which would have made a painter cry out. I said to a lady, "The toilette is more showy among you than in France." "But my dresses come from Paris!" I carefully refrained from replying, "But you selected them."

Excepting only the highest cla.s.s, they apparel themselves as fancy dictates. One imagines healthy bodies, well-built, beautiful at times; but they must be imagined. The physiognomy is often pure, but also often sheepish. Many are simple babies, new waxen dolls, with gla.s.s eyes, which appear entirely empty of ideas. Other faces have become ruddy, and turned to raw beefsteak. There is a fund of folly or of brutality in this inert flesh,--too white, or too red. Some are ugly and grotesque in the extreme; with heron's feet, stork's necks, always having the large front of white teeth, the projecting jaws of carnivora. As compensation, others are beautiful in the extreme. They have angelic faces; their eyes, of pale periwinkle, are softly deep; their complexion is that of a flower, or an infant; their smile is divine. One of these days, about ten o'clock in the morning, near Hyde Park Corner, I was rooted to the spot motionless with admiration at the sight of two young ladies; the one was sixteen, the other eighteen years old. They were in rustling dresses of white tulle amid a cloud of muslin; tall, slender, agile, their shape as perfect as their face, of incomparable freshness, resembling those marvellous flowers seen in select exhibitions, the whiteness of the lily or orchis; in addition to all that, gayety, innocence, a superabundance of unalloyed sap and infantine expression, of laughter, and the mien of birds; the earth did not support them.

Many of the horsewomen are charming, so simple and so serious, without a trace of coquetry; they come here not to be seen, but to take the air; their manner is frank without pretension; their shake of the hand quite loyal, almost masculine; no frippery in their attire; the small black vest, tightened at the waist, moulds a fine shape and healthy form; to my mind, the first duty of a young lady is to be in good health. They manage their horses with complete ease and a.s.surance.

Sometimes the father or brother stops and talks business or politics with a friend; the ladies listen and thus habituate themselves to serious topics. These fathers and brothers, too, are a pleasant sight; expressive and resolute faces, which bear, or have borne, the burden of life; less exhausted than among us, less ready to smile and to execute the tricks of politeness, but calmer and more staid, and who often excite in the onlooker a vague impression of respect, of esteem at least, and often of trust. Perhaps this is because I am instructed as to their condition; yet it seems to me that mistake is difficult; whether n.o.bles, members of Parliament, landed proprietors, their manners and their physiognomies are those of men accustomed to authority, and who have wielded it.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

[We do not cla.s.s Hawthorne in usual lists of travellers, yet in his "Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches," he gives us some thoughtful and interesting discussions of English scenes and inst.i.tutions which are well worth reproducing. We accordingly select his description of London's great centre of pilgrimage to the devout antiquarian.]

On a Sunday afternoon, I pa.s.sed through a side-entrance in the time-blackened wall of a place of wors.h.i.+p, and found myself among a congregation a.s.sembled in one of the transepts and the immediately contiguous portion of the nave. It was a vast old edifice, s.p.a.cious enough, within the extent covered by its pillared roof and overspread by its stone pavement, to accommodate the whole of church-going London, and with a far wider and loftier concave than any human power of lungs could fill with audible prayer. Oaken benches were arranged in the transept, on one of which I seated myself, and joined, as well as I knew how, in the sacred business that was going forward. But when it came to the sermon, the voice of the preacher was puny, and so were his thoughts, and both seemed impertinent at such a time and place, where he and all of us were bodily included within a sublime act of religion, which could be seen above and around us and felt beneath our feet.

The structure itself was the wors.h.i.+p of the devout men of long ago, miraculously preserved in stone without losing an atom of its fragrance and fervor; it was a kind of anthem-strain that they had sung and poured out of the organ in centuries gone by; and being so grand and sweet, the Divine benevolence had willed it to be prolonged for the behoof of auditors unborn. I therefore came to the conclusion that, in my individual case, it would be better and more reverent to let my eyes wander about the edifice than to fasten them and my thoughts on the evidently uninspired mortal who was venturing--and felt it no venture at all--to speak here above his breath.

The interior of Westminster Abbey (for the reader recognized it, no doubt, the moment we entered) is built of rich brown stone; and the whole of it--the lofty roof, the tall, cl.u.s.tered pillars, and the pointed arches--appears to be in consummate repair. At all points where decay has laid its finger the structure is clamped with iron, or otherwise carefully protected; and being thus watched over,--whether as a place of ancient sanct.i.ty, a n.o.ble specimen of Gothic art, or an object of national interest and pride,--it may reasonably be expected to survive for as many ages as have pa.s.sed over it already. It was sweet to feel its venerable quietude, its long-enduring peace, and yet to observe how kindly and even cheerfully it received the suns.h.i.+ne of to-day, which fell from the great windows into the fretted aisles and arches that laid aside somewhat of their aged gloom to welcome it. Suns.h.i.+ne always seems friendly to old abbeys, churches, and castles, kissing them, as it were, with a more affectionate, though still reverential, familiarity than it accords to edifices of later date. A square of golden light lay on the sombre pavement of the nave, afar off, falling through the grand western entrance, the folding leaves of which were wide open, and afforded glimpses of people pa.s.sing to and fro in the outer world, while we sat dimly enveloped in the solemnity of antique devotion.

In the south transept, separated from us by the full breadth of the minster, there were painted gla.s.s windows, of which the uppermost appeared to be a great orb of many-colored radiance, being, indeed, a cl.u.s.ter of saints and angels whose glorified bodies formed the rays of an aureole emanating from a cross in the midst. These windows are modern, but combine softness with wonderful brilliancy of effect.

Through the pillars and arches I saw that the walls in that distant region of the edifice were almost wholly incrusted with marble now grown yellow with time; no blank, unlettered slabs, but memorials of such men as these respective generations deemed wisest and bravest. Some of them were commemorated merely by inscriptions on mural tablets; others by sculptured bas-reliefs; others (once famous, but now forgotten, generals or admirals, these) by ponderous tombs that aspired towards the roof of the aisle, or partly curtained the immense arch of a window.

These mountains of marble were peopled with the sisterhood of Allegory, winged trumpeters, and cla.s.sic figures in full-bottomed wigs; but it was strange to observe how the old Abbey melted all such absurdities into the breadth of its own grandeur, even magnifying itself by what would elsewhere have been ridiculous. Methinks it is the test of Gothic sublimity to overpower the ridiculous without deigning to hide it; and these grotesque monuments of the last century answer to a similar purpose with the grinning faces which the old architects scattered among their most solemn conceptions....

It is a characteristic of this grand edifice that it permits you to smile as freely under the roof of its central nave as if you stood beneath the yet grander canopy of heaven. Break into laughter, if you feel inclined, provided the vergers do not hear it echoing among the arches. In an ordinary church you would keep your countenance for fear of disturbing the sanct.i.ties or proprieties of the place; but you need leave no honest and decorous portion of your human nature outside of these benign and hospitable walls. Their mild awfulness will take care of itself. Thus it does no harm to the general impression, when you come to be sensible that many of the monuments are ridiculous, and commemorate a mob of people who are mostly forgotten in their graves, and few of whom ever deserved any better boon from posterity. You acknowledge the force of Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller's objection to being buried in Westminster Abbey, because "they do bury fools there!"

Nevertheless, these grotesque carvings of marble, that break out in dingy-white blotches on the old freestone of the interior walls, have come there by as natural a process as might cause mosses and ivy to cl.u.s.ter about the external edifice; for they are the historical and biographical record of each successive age, written with its own hand, and all the truer for the inevitable mistakes, and none the less solemn for the occasional absurdity. Though you entered the Abbey expecting to see the tombs only of the ill.u.s.trious, you are content at last to read many names, both in literature and history, that have now lost the reverence of mankind, if indeed they ever really possessed it. Let these men rest in peace. Even if you miss a name or two that you hoped to find there, they may well be spared. It matters little a few more or less, or whether Westminster Abbey contains or lacks any one man's grave, so long as the centuries, each with the crowd of personages that it deemed memorable, have chosen it as their place of honored sepulture, and laid themselves down under its pavement. The inscriptions and devices on the walls are rich with evidences of the fluctuating tastes, fas.h.i.+ons, manners, opinions, prejudices, follies, wisdoms of the past; and thus they combine into a more truthful memorial of their dead times than any individual epitaph-maker ever meant to write.

When the services were over, many of the audience seemed inclined to linger in the nave or wander away among the mysterious aisles; for there is nothing in this world so fascinating as a Gothic minster, which always invites deeper and deeper into its heart both by vast revelations and shadowy concealments. Through the open-work screen that divides the nave from the chancel and choir we could discern the gleam of a marvellous window, but were debarred from entrance into that more sacred precinct of the Abbey by the vergers. These vigilant officials (doing their duty all the more strenuously because no fees could be exacted from Sunday visitors) flourished their staves and drove us towards the grand entrance like a flock of sheep. Lingering through one of the aisles, I happened to look down, and found my foot upon a stone inscribed with this familiar exclamation, "O rare Ben Jonson!" and remembered the story of stout old Ben's burial in that spot, standing upright,--not, I presume, on account of any unseemly reluctance on his part to lie down in the dust, like other men, but because standing-room was all that could reasonably be demanded for a poet among the slumberous notabilities of his age. It made me weary to think of it!--such a prodigious length of time to keep one's feet! Apart from the honor of the thing, it would certainly have been better for Ben to stretch himself at ease in some country church-yard. To this day, however, I fancy that there is a contemptuous alloy mixed up with the admiration which the higher cla.s.ses of English society profess for their literary men.

Another day--in truth, many other days--I sought out Poets' Corner, and found a sign-board and pointed finger, directing the visitor to it, on the corner house of a little lane leading towards the rear of the Abbey. The entrance is at the southeastern end of the south transept, and it is used, on ordinary occasions, as the only free mode of access to the building. It is no s.p.a.cious arch, but a small, lowly door, pa.s.sing through which, and pus.h.i.+ng aside an inner screen that partly keeps out an exceedingly chill wind, you find yourself in a dim nook of the Abbey, with the busts of poets gazing at you from the otherwise bare stone-work of the walls. Great poets, too; for Ben Jonson is right behind the door, and Spenser's tablet is next, and Butler's on the same side of the transept, and Milton's (whose bust you know at once by its resemblance to one of his portraits, though older, more wrinkled, and sadder than that) is close by, and a profile-medallion of Gray beneath it. A window high aloft sheds down a dusky daylight on these and many other sculptured marbles, now as yellow as old parchment, that cover the three walls of the nook up to an elevation of about twenty feet above the pavement.

It seemed to me that I had always been familiar with the spot. Enjoying a humble intimacy--and how much of my life had else been a dreary solitude!--with many of its inhabitants, I could not feel myself a stranger there. It was delightful to be among them. There was a genial awe, mingled with a sense of kind and friendly presences about me; and I was glad, moreover, at finding so many of them there together, in fit companions.h.i.+p, mutually recognized and duly honored, all reconciled now, whatever distant generations, whatever personal hostility or other miserable impediment, had divided them far asunder while they lived.

I have never felt a similar interest in any other tombstones, nor have I ever been deeply moved by the imaginary presence of other famous dead people. A poet's ghost is the only one that survives for his fellow-mortals after his bones are in the dust,--and he not ghostly, but cheris.h.i.+ng many hearts with his own warmth in the chillest atmosphere of life. What other fame is worth aspiring for? Or, let me speak it more boldly, what other long-enduring fame can exist? We neither remember nor care anything for the past, except as the poet has made it intelligibly n.o.ble and sublime to our comprehension. The shades of the mighty have no substance; they flit ineffectually about the darkened stage where they performed their momentary parts, save when the poet has thrown his own creative soul into them, and imparted a more vivid life than ever they were able to manifest to mankind while they dwelt in the body. And therefore--though he cunningly disguises himself in their armor, their robes of state, or kingly purple--it is not the statesman, the warrior, or the monarch that survives, but the despised poet, whom they may have fed with their crumbs, and to whom they owe all that they now are or have,--a name!

[Ill.u.s.tration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY AND VICTORIA TOWER]

In the foregoing paragraph I seem to have been betrayed into a flight above or beyond the customary level that best agrees with me; but it represents fairly enough the emotions with which I pa.s.sed from Poets'

Corner into the chapels, which contain the sepulchres of kings and great people. They are magnificent even now, and must have been inconceivably so when the marble slabs and pillars wore their new polish, and the statues retained the brilliant colors with which they were originally painted, and the shrines their rich gilding, of which the sunlight still shows a glimmer or a streak, though the sunbeam itself looks tarnished with antique dust. Yet this recondite portion of the Abbey presents few memorials of personages whom we care to remember. The shrine of Edward the Confessor has a certain interest, because it was so long held in religious reverence, and because the very dust that settled upon it was formerly worth gold. The helmet and war-saddle of Henry V., worn at Agincourt, and now suspended above his tomb, are memorable objects, but more for Shakespeare's sake than the victor's own. Rank has been the general pa.s.sport to admission here. n.o.ble and regal dust is as cheap as dirt under the pavement.

I am glad to recollect, indeed (and it is too characteristic of the right English spirit not to be mentioned), one or two gigantic statues of great mechanicians, who contributed largely to the material welfare of England, sitting familiarly in their marble chairs among forgotten kings and queens. Otherwise the quaintness of the earlier monuments, and the antique beauty of some of them, are what chiefly gives them value. Nevertheless, Addison is buried among the men of rank; not on the plea of his literary fame, however, but because he was connected with n.o.bility by marriage, and had been a secretary of state. His gravestone is inscribed with a resounding verse from Tickell's lines to his memory, the only lines by which Tickell himself is now remembered, and which (as I discovered a little while ago) he mainly filched from an obscure versifier of somewhat earlier date.

Returning to Poets' Corner, I looked again at the walls, and wondered how the requisite hospitality can be shown to poets of our own and the succeeding ages. There is hardly a foot of s.p.a.ce left, although room has lately been found for a bust of Southey and a full-length statue of Campbell. At best, only a little portion of the Abbey is dedicated to poets, literary men, musical composers, and others of the gentle artist breed, and even into that small nook of sanct.i.ty men of other pursuits have thought it decent to intrude themselves. Methinks the tuneful throng, being at home here, should recollect how they were treated in their lifetime, and turn the cold shoulder, looking askance at n.o.bles and official personages, however worthy of honorable interment elsewhere. Yet it shows aptly and truly enough what portion of the world's regard and honor has heretofore been awarded to literary eminence in comparison with other modes of greatness,--this dimly-lighted corner (nor even that quietly to themselves in the vast minster), the walls of which are sheathed and hidden under marble that has been wasted upon the ill.u.s.trious obscure.

THE GARDENS AT KEW.

JULIAN HAWTHORNE.

[Kew Gardens stand pre-eminent among conservatories, and a description of the treasures of botany there gathered cannot fail to prove of interest to our readers. Julian Hawthorne, son of the celebrated novelist, and himself a writer of rich imaginative power, thus describes these famous gardens _con amore_.]

On the banks of the Thames, about a dozen miles from London in a southerly direction, lies the ancient town of Twickenham. In the seventeenth century, Alexander Pope had a villa there; somewhat later, Horace Walpole built his rococo castle at Strawberry Hill, a mile beyond the village; and close by, to the north, is Whitton, where Sir John Suckling lived. Within an easy hour's walk stands Hampton Court, built by Cardinal Wolsey of haughty and unhappy memory, and approached through the magnificent avenue of Bushey Park. Nearly as far in the opposite direction is Richmond, with its venerable bridge and famous hill, the latter commanding a view of rural English landscape which, as Thackeray says, looks as if it had its hair curled, like the waiters at the inn on its summit. A mile down the river from Richmond, and six miles from London, extend the renowned botanical gardens of Kew.

It will be seen, therefore, that Twickenham was not a bad place for a suburban residence: the roads were excellent, the scenery and a.s.sociations delightful, and, by taking the train, one could be at Waterloo railway-station, in the heart of London, in half an hour. I lived there several years, and know something about it.

The most agreeable expedition of all, taking one month with another, was to Kew Gardens. In winter, it was a luxury to sit in the hot-houses; in summer it was lovely throughout. You could travel thither by train; but the best way was to go on foot. Pa.s.sing through Twickenham town, and through the church-yard, with its gravestones centuries old, you came out upon the river banks. Here a broad, well-kept path followed the enchanting windings of the stream, and skirted the lawns of pretty villas on the left. On the right, soon appeared the green heights of the Hill, with clumps of mighty oaks, and the gleaming ramparts and windows of the hostelry over all. At its foot, on the river, were boat-houses and "hards," with slender rowing-craft drawn up, or lying afloat, or pus.h.i.+ng off into the current with their freight of white-jerseyed oarsmen. And now came into view the quaint, hog-backed bridge, with its high stone parapet, and the eddies swirling against its piers; and Richmond itself, red with brick, white with stucco, green with trees; irregular and diversified in outline; resting snug against the base of the Hill, and clambering some distance up its long slope.

You crossed the bridge, lingering on the way to admire the railroad bridge a few hundred yards farther down, reflected in the river-mirror.

Between the two bridges are a couple of islets, only a few yards in diameter, but with trees growing on them; and hereabouts are generally moored three or four fis.h.i.+ng-punts, in which sit patiently, all day long, stout, middle-aged fishermen, watching their cork floats drift down the stream, and faithfully hoping that each new cast will bring the long-expected fish. Often have I watched them, but the fish never came.

Probably, as Hood conjectured, "it was caught yesterday."

The river-side walk now continues along the Richmond side of the river.

For half a mile it has the town on the right. Then the boundaries of Kew Gardens begin, and here is the most beautiful part of the walk. Immense trees stretch their ponderous boughs far across the path, and they droop so low that the pendent foliage almost sweeps the water. Through the fretted sun and shadow the path winds; every little way there is a hospitable bench, resting on which you gaze forth upon the quiet-moving river, with its pa.s.sing wherries, its reflections of sky and cloud, and its battlemented residences far withdrawn beyond green meadows on the opposite side. The path is never overcrowded, even on holidays; but you may always see lovers wandering arm in arm along it; and occasionally there is a brisk exchange of "Thames chaff" between the occupants of the skimming boats and the loiterers on the sh.o.r.e. Meanwhile, the great domain of Kew keeps pace with you on the other hand. You are divided from it by a wide water-ditch, backed by a high stone embankment, in turn surmounted by an iron railing. But your eyes may stray whither feet cannot follow; and you note the lovely groves, the beautiful green glades and gracious vistas, the secluded paths weaving in and out, and now and then you catch the sparkle of lofty domes of gla.s.s rising above the trees, looking for all the world like gigantic soap-bubbles. It is a sort of fairy-land beyond there; and long before you arrive at the entrance your appet.i.te for what lies within is sharp-set.

The feast in store for you more than fulfils expectation; but at this point, since we are journeying in imagination only, and miles count for nothing, we will turn back, and enter the gardens from the other end. By this route we approach its beauties gradually and in due order, and our pleasure has opportunity to grow from promising beginnings to complete content. The gate is small here, and the uniformed guardian simply gives us a glance, to a.s.sure himself that we are not toughs or pickpockets.

Kew Gardens are free to the public in the afternoons, barring only the rowdy element. The public would like to have them free in the mornings, too; and, for aught I know, Sir Joseph Hooker may have yielded his a.s.sent by this time. But in the seventies, when I was there, he resisted, on the ground that it was necessary to close the gardens for half the day, in order to allow time for study, and for keeping the houses and plantations in order. The grounds are constantly visited by gardeners and botanists from all parts of the country, and from the world at large; and these persons require some measure of seclusion in order to prosecute their labors and investigations. Practical botany is not, as a rule, pursued at night; though, with the aid of electric lights, no doubt it might be.

However, we have by this time pa.s.sed through some introductory shrubbery, and have emerged into a straight, open avenue, a third of a mile or more in length. Directly before us is an immensely high tower,--I should think nearly two hundred feet,--painted red, black, blue, and yellow, and fas.h.i.+oned to resemble a Chinese minaret or paG.o.da.

The central shaft is circular, and, I believe, of masonry; but it is surrounded at short intervals by wooden balconies, and the roof is of a concave conical shape, like a mandarin's hat. I never saw any signs of life in this tower, and do not know what it is used for; but I have heard that the son-in-law of Lord Capel (who first laid out Kew Gardens some two hundred years ago) added to the importance of the place by making it the head-quarters of English astronomy; and this tower, which certainly would make an excellent observatory, may have had something to do with that.

Beyond the tower extends a broad, straight path, between well-kept lawns, on which are planted trees of both native and foreign growth.

Towards the river, on the left, the grounds are irregular and diversified with clumps of trees, ponds, and gra.s.sy undulations. On the right, concealed by a hedge of foliage, is the highway between Richmond and London. Before us, at the end of the walk, is an iron fence, dividing the inner enclosure--the Botanical Gardens proper--from this outer region. We reach it in due time, and, having pa.s.sed the gate, are in the immediate neighborhood of the palm-house, whose bulbous domes we saw just now from the river bank. It is as beautiful a piece of gla.s.s building as ever I saw, handsomely proportioned, and of n.o.ble outline.

Its great size is somewhat concealed by its charming symmetry; but when we are within, the vast dimensions are realized. Beneath its central dome the tallest palms rise unimpeded. You peep through long vistas of broad green fronds and slender, bending stems: it broadens and reaches out on every side; the strange, exotic foliage rejoices the eye, and the warm embracing atmosphere makes you feel that you are in the tropics.

To one who, like myself, pretends to no scientific knowledge of botany, and who, during these temperate summers and fitful winters, often hankers after the equator, the atmosphere of a thorough-going conservatory has a profound fascination. At one step I pa.s.s from the lat.i.tude of "the roaring forties" to that of Martinique or the Galapagos Islands. I unb.u.t.ton my coat, and inhale deep breaths of air laden with the fragrance of the sun-lands. The heat is not enervating, but stimulating; for it is redolent with the life-giving emanations of plants that riot in luxuriance all the year round,--that know neither spring, autumn, nor winter,--whose mult.i.tudinous boughs were made to be the haunt of paroquets and monkeys, and amidst whose fern-enwrapped roots lurk lizards and gliding serpents. Here thrive the dark-skinned races of the torrid zone, innocent of clothes and civilization, seeking excitement not in the mutations of the stock-exchange or the scandals of society, but in trapping the alligator and shooting the jaguar and the antelope with arrows deadly with _curari_. Into the intricate depths of these jungles the fierce sun scarcely penetrates; the unstinted energy of his own rays has erected a barrier against himself. Here, when the rain falls, it falls in rus.h.i.+ng torrents; when the wind blows, it blows a shrieking hurricane; when the lightning flashes, the whole dome of heaven is ablaze with pa.s.sionate splendor. Here the stars poise and smoulder close to the earth, and the moon is brighter than the sun of hyperborean England. Sitting on a rustic bench hedged round with tapering palm-stems, and screened by leaves two or three of which would carpet the floor of an ordinary drawing-room, I love to think of these things.

The enjoyment is perhaps enhanced by an occasional peep through the gla.s.s walls of the paradise, revealing the melancholy Britisher, close at hand in s.p.a.ce, but thousands of miles distant in temperature, stalking rigidly about in overcoat and gloves. Then, too, the hot-house, while giving the charm and beauty of the tropics, dispenses with the inconveniences. Here are no coral-snakes to drop from the boughs down the back of your neck; no scorpions or tarantulas to crawl up your trousers; no apes to pelt you with cocoa-nuts; no rhinoceroses to toss you above the tree-tops; no tigers to disembowel you and bite your head off. On the contrary, everything is scrupulously neat and secure. The rich loam round the roots of the plants harbors nothing noxious; the asphalt walks that thread the thicket are clean and trustworthy. Ever and anon you come upon a native of the place,--not a savage, painted in red and black stripes and with his bow-string drawn to his ear, but--a quiet and sober gardener in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, pruning a dead leaf or bough, or raking the mould round the roots of a new importation, or wielding a watering-pot. The place is quite still; the huge leaves hang motionless; the noise of a pair of steps being dragged into position resounds through the building; and, if you listen, you will at all times hear the pleasant trickling of water in some reservoir or other. If the terrors of the jungle are still too much for your nerves, you may be comforted by observing that each plant wears a label, painted on wood or enamelled on tin, describing its scientific name and habitat. It cost money to bring them here, and the very leaves of their twigs are numbered.