The garden is shaded with trees, and set out with greensward and
gravel-walks, from which the people were sweeping the withered autumnal
leaves, which now fall every day. Plaster statues stand here and there,
one of them without a head, thus disclosing the hollowness of the trunk;
there were one or two little drizzly fountains, with the water dripping
over the rock-work, of which the English are so fond; and the buildings
for the animals and other purposes had a flimsy, pasteboard aspect of
pretension. The garden was in its undress; few visitors, I suppose,
coming hither at this time of day,--only here and there a lady and
children, a young man and girl, or a couple of citizens, loitering about.
I take pains to remember these small items, because they suggest the
day-life or torpidity of what may look very brilliant at night. These
corked-up fountains, slovenly greensward, cracked casts of statues,
pasteboard castles, and duck-pond Bay of Balaclava then shining out in
magic splendor, and the shabby attendants whom we saw sweeping and
shovelling probably transformed into the heroes of Sebastopol.
J----- thought it a delightful place; but I soon grew very weary, and
came away about four o'clock, and, getting into a city omnibus, we
alighted on the hither side of Blackfriar's Bridge. Turning into Fleet
Street, I looked about for a place to dine at, and chose the Mitre
Tavern, in memory of Johnson and Boswell. It stands behind a front of
modern shops, through which is an archway, giving admittance into a
narrow court-yard, which, I suppose, was formerly open to Fleet Street.
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