Yesterday we visited, 'en attendant,' the parks in town,--Kensington Gardens;--Regent's park, 'en détail,' &c., on which occasion we did not omit to look in at the Diorama exhibited there. This far surpassed my expectations, and all that I had formerly seen of the same kind. It is certainly impossible to deceive the senses more effectually; even with the certitude of illusion one can hardly persuade himself it exists. The picture represented the interior of a large abbey-church, appearing perfectly in its real dimensions. A side door is open, ivy climbs through the windows, and the sun occasionally shines through the door, and lightens with a cheering beam the remains of coloured windows, glittering through cobwebs. Through the opposite window at the end you see the neglected garden of the monastery, and above it, single clouds in the sky, which, flitting stormily across, occasionally obscure the sunlight, and throw deep shadows over the church--tranquil as death; where the crumbled but magnificent remains of an ancient knight reposes in gloomy majesty. As our departure is fixed for to-morrow, I send off this letter, although it has not yet grown to the usual corpulence. How slender are yours in comparison! Certainly, whenever our descendants find the dusty correspondence of their ancestors in a corner of the old library, they will be equally astonished at my prodigality and at your avarice, 'A propos,' do not be too dissipated in B----, and forget not, even for the shortest time, The most faithful of your friends, L. LETTER VIII. _Watford, December 25, 1826._ DEAR FRIEND, This morning we started,--unluckily in bad rainy weather. Ten miles from London we commenced operations with the inspection of two villas and a large park, near the pretty little village of Stanmore. The first villa was thoroughly in the rural Gothic style, with ornamented pointed gables; a 'genre' in which English architects are peculiarly happy. The interior was also most prettily fitted up in the same style, and at the same time extremely comfortable and inviting. Even the doors in the walls surrounding the kitchen-garden were adorned with windows of coloured glass at the top, which had a singular and beautiful brilliancy among the foliage. The little flower-garden, too, was laid out in beds of Gothic forms surrounded by gravel walks, and the fancy had not a bad effect. Very different was the aspect of the other villa, in the Italian taste, with large vases before it, filled not with flowers but with green and yellow gourds and pumpkins. A superabundance of wooden statues, painted white, decorated, or rather deformed, the gardens. Among them a roaring rampant lion vainly sought to inspire terror, and a Cupid hanging in a bush threatened, as abortively, the passengers with his darts.