A great many things may be seen in three weeks.
That is very true in the manner that many of our countrymen, who look merely at the face of countries, and bring home their empty words, see them; but the tourist on his first visit abroad, before he has half a dozen weeks of experience, begins to ascertain what a tremendous labor constant sight-seeing is.
In London I have met American friends, who had the keenest desire to visit some of the streets described in Dickens's works, and one who told me that he had just found, after a difficult search, Goswell Street, and had walked down that thoroughfare till he found a house with a placard in the window of "Apartments furnished for a single gentleman. Inquire within!" And feeling pretty sure that Mrs. Bardell lived there, he had the Pickwickian romance all taken out of him by a sort of Sally-Brass-looking personage, who responded to his inquiries, and confessed to the name of Finch, a sort of Chaff-Finch he thought, from the sharp and acrid style of her treating his investigations. I confess, myself, to a brief halt at the Pimlico station, and a glance about to see what the expression, "everything in Pimlico order," meant, and came to the conclusion that it was because there were whole streets of houses there so painfully regular and so exactly like each other, as to excite my wonder how a man ever learned to recognize his own dwelling from his neighbors'.
But it is a Sunday morning in London, and we will make an excursion up the River Thames on a penny steamboat. These little steam omnibuses are a great convenience, and are often so covered with passengers as to look like a floating mass of humanity; the price is about a penny a mile, and a ride up to Kew Gardens, about seven miles from where I took the boat, cost me sixpence. The boats dart about on the river with great skill and speed, and make and leave landings almost as quickly as an omnibus would stop to take up passengers. Americans cannot fail to notice that these boats have not yet adopted the signal bell to the engineer; but that party has orders passed him from the captain, by word of mouth through a boy stationed at the gangway, and the shout of; "Ease-ar"! "Start-ar"! "Back-ar"! "Slow-ar"! "Go on," regulates the boat's movements, gives employment to one more hand, and enables Englishmen to hold on to an old notion.
The sail up the Thames upon one of these little river steamers, of a fine day, is a very pleasant excursion. A good view of the Houses of Parliament and all the great London bridges is had, the little steamer passing directly under the arches of the latter; but at some of them, whose arches were evidently constructed before steam passages of this kind were dreamed of, the arches were so low that the smoke-pipe, constructed with a hinge for that purpose, was lowered backwards flat to the deck, and after passing the arch, at once resumed its upright position. Landing not far from Kew Green, we pursued our way along a road evidently used by the common classes, who came out here for Sunday excursions, for it was past a series of little back gardens of houses, apparently of mechanics, who turned an honest penny by fitting up these little plots into cheap tea gardens, by making arbors of hop vines or cheap running plants, beneath which tables were spread, and signs, in various styles of orthography, informed the pedestrian that hot tea and tea cakes were always ready, or that boiling water could be had by those wishing to make their own tea, and that excursion parties could "take tea in the arbor" at a very moderate sum.
Kew Gardens contain nearly three hundred and fifty acres, and are open to the public every afternoon, Sunday not excepted. Upon the latter day, which was when I visited them, there are—if the weather is pleasant—from ten to twelve thousand people, chiefly of the lower orders, present; but the very best of order prevailed, and all seemed to be enjoying themselves very much. Beside the tea gardens, on the road of approach, just outside the gardens, there were every species of hucksters' refreshments—all kinds of buns, cakes, fruits, &c., in little booths and stands of those who vended them, for the refreshment of little family parties, or individuals who had come from London here to pass the day. Hot waffles were baked and sold at two pence each, as fast as the vender could turn his hand to it; an uncertain sort of coffee at two pence a cup, and tea ditto, were served out by a vender from a portable urn kept hot by a spirit lamp beneath it; and servant girls out for a holiday, workmen with their wives and children, shop-boys and shop-men, and throngs of work people, were streaming on in through the ornamented gates, beyond which boundary no costermonger is allowed to vend his wares, and within the precincts of the gardens no eating and throwing of fragments of fruit or food permitted.
The gardens are beautifully laid out in pleasure-grounds, broad walks, groves, flower gardens, greensward, &c.—a pleasing combination of the natural and artificial; the public may walk where they wish; they may saunter here and there; they may lie down or walk on the greensward, only they must not pluck the flowers or break the trees and plants; the garden is a perfect wealth of floral treasures. Seventy-five of its three hundred and fifty acres are devoted to the Botanic Gardens, with different hot-houses for rare and tropical plants, all open to the public.
Here are the great Palm House, with its palm trees, screw pines, bananas, bamboos, sugar-canes, fig trees, and other vegetable wonders; the Victoria Regia House, with that huge-leafed production spread out upon its waters, with specimens of lotus, lilies, papyrus, and other plants of that nature; the tropical hot-house, full of elegant flowery tropical plants; a Fern House, containing an immense variety of ferns, and a building in which an extensive and curious collection of the cactus family are displayed. These hot-houses and nurseries are all kept in perfect order, heated with steam, and the plants in them properly arranged and classified.
The great parterre of flowers presents a brilliant sight, showing all the rich and gorgeous hues, so skilfully arranged as to look in the distance like a silken robe of many colors spread upon the earth. These winding walks, ornamental buildings, ferneries, azalea, camellia, rhododendron, and heath "houses" afford every opportunity for the botanist to study the habits of plants, the lover of flowers to feast on their beauty, and the poor man and his family an agreeable, pleasant, and rational enjoyment. Then there is a museum of all the different kinds of wood known in the world, and the forms into which it is or can be wrought. Here is rose-wood in the rough and polish; great rough pieces of mahogany in a log, and wrought into a piece of elegant carving; willow, in its long, slender wands, and twisted into elegant baskets; a great chunk of iron-wood in the rough, or shaped with the rude implement and patient industry of the savage into an elaborately-wrought war-club or paddle; tough lance-wood, and its carriage work beside it; maple and its pretty panels; ash; pine of every kind, and then numerous wonderful woods I had never heard of, from distant lands, some brilliant in hue and elegant in grain, others curious in form, of wondrous weight or astonishing lightness; ebony and cork-wood; bamboo, sandal-wood, camphor, cedar and cocoa-wood; stunted sticks from arctic shores, solid timber from the temperate, and the curious fibrous stems of the tropics. It was really astonishing to see what an extensive, curious, and interesting collection this museum of the different woods of the world formed.
A short, brisk ride, of little more than a couple of miles, brought us to the celebrated Star and Garter Hotel,[A] at Richmond Hill, where one of the most beautiful English landscapes in the vicinity of London can be obtained. The hotel, which was situated upon a high terrace, commanded an extensive view of the Thames far below it, in its devious windings through a wooded country of hill and dale, with Windsor Castle in the distance. This house, so famed in novels and plays, is the resort of the aristocracy; its terraced gardens are elegant, and Richmond Park, in the immediate vicinity, with its two thousand acres, is crowded every afternoon during the season with their equipages—equipages, however, which do not begin to compare in grace and elegance with those of Central Park, New York.