It was soon after my arrival in the Metropolis that I went, one afternoon, to see the display of horsemanship, in Hyde Park. Strange that the scene of so much aristocratic display should be known as “Rotten-Row!” It is a road for saddle-horses exclusively, and very exclusive are the equestrians generally, who enjoy their delightful exercise in its pale. Here you see the best of horse-flesh, laden with the “porcelain-clay” of human flesh. The sides of the road are lined with pedestrians, some of whom touch their hats to the riders, and are recognized in turn; but most of them look wishfully on the sport of others, as if they were conscious that they were born to be nobody, and were unfeignedly sorry for it. Ha! how dashingly the ladies go by, and how ambitiously their favored companions display their good fortune in attending them! Here a gay creature rides independently enough, with her footman at a respectful distance. She is an heiress, and the young gallants whom she scarcely deigns to notice, are dying of love for her and her guineas. Here comes an old gentleman and his two beautiful daughters. It is Lord ——, and the elder of the twain is soon to be married, the fortunate expectant being a nobleman of large estates. We look in vain this afternoon for “the Duke.” But very likely we shall see him before our walk is done. Yonder whirls a barouche, with outriders. It is the Queen and Prince Albert taking an airing. A Bishop comes along on horseback. “It must be one of the Irish Bishops,” said the friend with whom I was walking, “for I certainly have never seen him before.” I now saw the Crystal Palace for the first time, and scarcely looked at it at all. It was just what every body knows, from ten thousand pictures. I had a prejudice against it, at this time, heightened by the fact that many, whom I had met, had innocently taken it for granted that an American must, of course, have come to England to see the show. The idea of going to England to look at anything short of England itself! Besides, I supposed it a mere toy of Prince Albert’s—just the thing for a Dutch folly—or, like the Russian ice-palace, ————“Work of imperial dotage, Shining, and yet so false!” I looked, therefore, and passed by. A fine walk we had to Kensington Gardens, and round by Bayswater, returning across Hyde Park. It was pleasant to see the good use to which these vast grounds are put by the People proper. Children and their nurses seem to take their fill of them. It was George the Second, I think, who asked Walpole what it would cost to fence in St. James’s Park, so as to keep the people out. “Only _three crowns_,” was the reply; and the heavy Hanoverian learned an important lesson, as to the difference between British freemen, and the sort of people he had been wont to deal with, in his darling Electorate.