THE Lungs of London, through which her large masses of population find respiration and ventilation, are her parks, gardens, and pleasure grounds. The city is admirably provided with these oases, which occur frequently in the great desert of brick and mortar. Nothing can be more grateful to the eye of the stranger sojourning in the English metropolis, than the frequent views which he encounters of smooth bits of lawn, upon which large numbers of sheep browse peacefully; acres of flower beds, in the care of the most celebrated florists; sheets of water in which nude bathers are disporting with perfect freedom; or long and wide expanses of green trees and shrubbery, enclosed by high iron railings, but free to all the citizens to enjoy and to hold forever. [Sidenote: REGENT'S AND HYDE PARKS.] Beside the parks and gardens, London has an infinity of squares, commons, and crescents, which are surrounded by private residences and inclosed by railings and walls--such as Trafalgar Square (public), Bedford, Cavendish, St. George's, Grosvenor, Leicester, Soho, Belgrave, Euston, Finsbury, Fitzroy, Portman, Russell, Wellclose, Hanover, Brunswick, Eaton, Berkeley, Golden, Mecklenburg, Red Lion, Tavistock, and a great number of other squares which I do not now call to mind. The majority of these places have plots of grass and trees, with fountains and flower-beds, varying in size from a quarter of an acre to three acres in extent. Then again others have not a blade of grass or a single shrub to dignify their lonely aridness, and the hum of cartwheels and the noise of brawling men and women, are heard all day and into the night ascending from them. Half a dozen of them, like Belgrave, Grosvenor, and Berkeley Squares, are hemmed in on all sides by the gloomy and palatial dwellings of the governing class of England, who seek to absorb even a stray blade of grass, or the leaves of a scantily clothed tree, sooner than allow the poor and degraded to enjoy them. And so we have green spots, like Golden and Soho, and Wellclose Squares, exhibiting the various gradations from squalid poverty to shabby gentility; and in Belgrave and Grosvenor Squares we have all the indications of refinement, wealth, perfumery, silks, and satins, combined with a resolve which says to Golden and Wellclose Squares, "You are of a different nature from us. We belong to a class which knows you not, and with whom you can never mingle--never. You are polluted and degraded. We are the salt of the earth. We lock the iron gates of our private squares, and you must not enter them; and yet we have parks and preserves, and Swiss Chalets, and villas at Mentone and Rome, and spas at Hombourg and Baden." And accordingly and most dutifully misery shrinks by high iron walls in the heart of London, or at most will only peer furtively through the iron grating of Grosvenor and Belgrave Squares.