little glen, once the most beautiful and retired spot within the circumference of the Park, and would be so still, if some military Goths—the Board of Ordnance, I suspect—had not desecrated it by the erection of a very ugly barrack—all barracks are ugly, but this particular barrack, being located in a sweet pretty place, is superlatively ugly—we wonder the Board of Ordnance has not a little more taste! A little farther on, and we come to a couple of leafless old trees—nature's own ruins—ivy-mantled, and carefully defended from the rude assaults of idle men and boys by an iron paling—two venerable old cripples are they—what names they are known by I am sure I know not—but this I know, that I never look upon them without humming the old Scottish, old-warld, old folks' tune of "John Anderson my jo."
Now, the classic bridge over the Serpentine—a very neat fresh-water bridge as you would wish to see in a summer-day—attracts our architectural optics, and beneath its arches we catch on our picturesque retina small patches of the verdant green of Kensington Gardens, whither we are tending. We are assuredly in the country now?—no such thing; for just at our nose is a powder magazine, of an exploded order of architecture, that transports us back again to the piazza of Covent Garden. Heaven sends fields and groves, hills and dales, wood and water, and ever in the midst of these, the devil sends one of his chosen architects; or, what is ten times worse, the Board of Ordnance sends one of theirs, to dissolve the charm, and to load the lovely earth with uglinesses not her own!
We are on the bridge of the Serpentine—over the keystone of the centre arch; and without affectation—that is, without Cockney affectation—there are few points of view in the immediate vicinity of great cities more attractive than this. To the east lies the whole length of the Serpentine, and to the west extends the sweep of the same river as it bends towards Bayswater, where it enters the Park, with the gently swelling banks rising on either side. The view from the high grounds near Cumberland gate is also very fine, and the Queen's ride affords many pleasing prospects to the right and left. From the termination of this noble avenue we enter, by a foot gate,
Kensington Gardens,
Which consisted originally, as we are told by Pennant, of only twenty-six acres. Queen Anne added thirty acres, which were laid out by her gardener, Mr Wise; but the principal additions were made by the late Queen, who took in near three hundred acres out of Hyde Park, which were laid out by Bridgeman. They are now three and a half miles in circumference. The broad walk, which extends from the palace along the south side of the gardens, is in the spring a very fashionable promenade, especially on Sunday mornings. Kensington Gardens have been the subject of several poems, one especially by Tickell, of which we would here insert some extracts did space permit. The present extent of these gardens is somewhere about three hundred and thirty-six acres, with eight acres of water, occupying a circular pond to the west of the palace—an ugly edifice, as all our metropolitan palatial edifices are—but unpretending enough; nor, unlike its precious colleague in St James's Park, does it superadd impudence to vulgarity. At this season of the year Kensington Gardens look remarkably well; they have an air more park-like, more secluded, than any of the other public walks of the metropolis, and afford a more unbroken shelter from the noonday heat. Here a is solitude, a seclusion, as complete as can be wished for in the immediate vicinity of a great city; the noise, confusion, and racket of the mighty Babylon close by, is lost in the distance, save when the booming bell of St Paul's is heard to thunder forth the fleeting hour. The trees here are more numerous, more lofty, and cast a greater breadth of shade than in the Parks; but then, regarded individually, they are comparatively insignificant. The grounds are skilfully laid out, partly in the Dutch, partly in the English taste, which combination of the artificial formal, with the more natural irregular style, when cleverly executed, forms the perfection of landscape-gardening. This union of grandeur and breadth of effect with a certain degree of natural arrangement has been very well hit off in these gardens—the long, unbroken, regular avenues of green sward, with the dense columnar
