The Queen having gone to Scotland the day
before, the palace now looked deserted, although there was a one-horse
cab, of shabby aspect, standing at the principal front, where doubtless
the carriages of princes and the nobility draw up. There is a fountain
playing before the palace, and water-fowl love to swim under its
perpetual showers. These ducks and geese are very tame, and swim to the
margin of the pond to be fed by visitors, looking up at you with great
intelligence.
S----- asked a man in a sober suit of livery (of whom we saw several
about the Park), whose were some of the large mansions which we saw, and
he pointed out Stafford House, the residence of the Duke of Sutherland,
--a very noble edifice, much more beautiful than the palace, though not
so large; also the house of the Earl of Ellesmere, and residences of
other noblemen. This range of mansions, along the park, from the spot
whence we viewed them, looks very much like Beacon Street, in Boston,
bordering on the Common, allowing for a considerable enlargement of
scale in favor of the Park residences. The Park, however, has not the
beautiful elms that overshadow Boston Common, nor such a pleasant
undulation of surface, nor the fine off-view of the country, like that
across Charles River. I doubt whether London can show so delightful a
spot as that Common, always excepting the superiority of English lawns,
which, however, is not so evident in the London parks, there being less
care bestowed on the grass than I should have expected.
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