restores such information, must always have the advantage over one who gains it for the first time, at second hand. I could now step into St. James’s Park, and freshen my appetite for breakfast, while enjoying its delightful air, and venerable associations. I soon learned how to protract my walk, passing Buckingham Palace, up Constitution Hill, and so into Hyde Park—where one may spend the day delightfully, and almost fancy himself in the country. Indeed, stretching one’s rambles into Kensington Gardens, it is not easy to be moderate in the enjoyment, or to return without fatigue; so vast is the extent of these successive ranges, and so much of England can one find, as it were, in the midst of London. Oh, wise and prudent John Bull, to ennoble thy metropolis with such spacious country-walks, and to sweeten it so much with country air! Truly these lungs of London are vital to such a Babylon, and there is no beauty to be compared to them in any city I have ever seen. Talk of the Tuilleries—talk of the _Champs Elysées_—you may throw in _Luxembourg_ and _Jardin des Plantes_ to boot, and in my estimation Hyde Park is worth the whole. I do not think the English are half proud enough of their capital, conceited as they are about so many things besides. They are ashamed of Trafalgar Square and some other slight mistakes, and they always apologize for London, and wonder what a foreigner can find to please him, in the mere exterior of its immensity. But _foreigner_, forsooth! I always felt that an Anglo-American may feel himself far more at home in London, than many who inhabit there. Who are the reigning family, but a race of Germans, never yet completely naturalized either in Church or State? What is England to Prince Albert, except as he can use it for his own purposes? But to me, and to many of my countrymen, it is as dear as heart’s blood; every fibre of our flesh, every particle of our bone, and the whole fabric of our thought, as well as the vitalizing spirit of our holy religion, being derived from the glorious Isle, in whose own tongue we call her blessed. It is not as unfilial to America, but only as faithful to the antecedents of my own beloved country, that I ask no Englishman’s leave to walk the soil of England with filial pride, and in some sense to claim “a richer use of his,” than he himself enjoys. He dwells in it, and uses it of necessity for some ignoble purposes; but I have no associations with the malt-tax, or with manufactories. England reveals herself to me only in her higher and nobler character, as the mother, and nurse, and glorious preceptress of the race to which I belong. Hence, I say, it is only a true American who can feel the entire and unmixed sentiment and poetry of England.