I found the garden much altered, but not I think for the better; for there is now a mixture of the regular and the irregular which has a very unpleasant effect. The ugly fashion now prevalent in England, of planting the ‘pleasure-ground’ with single trees or shrubs placed at a considerable distance almost in rows, has been introduced in several parts of these grounds. This gives the grass-plats the air of nursery-grounds. The shrubs are trimmed round, so as not to touch each other, the earth carefully cleared about them every day, and the edges of the turf cut into stiff lines, so that you see more of black earth than of green foliage, and the free beauty of nature is quite checked. Mr. Nash, however, adheres to a very different principle, and the new gardens of Buckingham Palace are models to all planters.
The most favourable circumstance to English gardeners is the mildness of the climate. Common and Portuguese laurels, azaleas, and rhododendrons are not injured by the frost, and afford the most beautiful luxuriant thickets, summer and winter, and, in their respective seasons, the richest blossoms and berries.
Magnolias are seldom covered, and even camellias stand abroad in peculiarly sheltered spots, with only the protection of a matting. The turf preserves its beautiful freshness all winter; indeed at that season it is usually thicker and more beautiful than in summer, when I remember, in dry weather, to have seen it worse than ever I saw it in the Mark. The present is just the season in which the whole vegetation is in its utmost magnificence.
A pretty effect is produced at Chiswick by a single lofty tree, the stem of which has been cleared up to the very top, and from beneath which you command a view of the whole garden and a part of the park;—a good hint to landscape gardeners, which I advise you to profit by at M——. The cedars here (which unfortunately will not thrive with us) are celebrated, and grow to the size of old fir-trees. Colossal yew hedges also show how long this estate has been an object of extraordinary care. The new conservatories do more credit to the taste of the present possessor than the pleasure-ground. It is strange enough that orange-trees nowhere reach any great size in England. They are very ‘mésquin’ here. On the other hand, the flower-gardens are magnificent. The beds are so thinly planted that each separate plant has room to spread, excepting in those beds which are entirely filled with one sort of flower. In them, the chief aim is the perfection of the whole, and they are consequently by far the most beautiful. In the pinery I saw, for the first time, the great Providence pines, specimens of which have been produced of twelve pounds weight.
There is a menagerie attached to the garden, in which a tame elephant performs all sorts of feats, and very quietly suffers anybody to ride him about a large grass-plat. His neighbour is a lama, of a much less gentle nature; his weapon is a most offensive saliva, which he spits out to a distance of some yards at any one who irritates him; he takes such good aim, and fires so suddenly at his antagonist, that it is extremely difficult to avoid his charge.
Chiswick has unfortunately only stagnant slimy water, which is sometimes so low that the elephant, if he were thirsty, might drink it up at a draught.
Passing through a continued series of pretty villas and country-houses of every kind, amid the whirl of horsemen, stage-coaches, travelling-carriages, and coal-wagons drawn by gigantic horses, with occasional pretty glimpses of the Thames, I reached Hyde-Park Corner, after an hour’s quick driving, and buried myself anew in the labyrinth of the huge town.
The next day I visited the City, accompanied by my ‘laquais de place,’ a Swiss, who had travelled in Egypt, Syria, Siberia, and America; had published a Russian Post-book; brought the first intelligence of the taking of Hamburg, together with an actual specimen of a live Cossack, to London; bought Napoleon’s coronation robes at Paris, and exhibited them here; and speaks almost all the European languages. I think all this is not dear at half-a-guinea a day. He may be useful, too, as a physician, for he has collected so many secrets and recipes in his travels, that he has a domestic remedy for every disorder, and moreover, as he maintains, is in possession of a thousand different receipts for making punch. Under the conduct of this universal genius, I entered the Royal Exchange for the first time.
In other cities the Exchange has merely a mercantile air—here it has a completely historical one. The imposing statues of English sovereigns around, the most remarkable among whom are Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth, combined with the antique and stately architecture, excite a poetical feeling, to which the thought of the boundless commerce of which London is the centre gives a still deeper significancy. The men, however, who animate the picture soon draw one back into the region of common-place, for selfishness and avarice gleam but too clearly from every eye. In this point of view, the place I am describing, and indeed the whole city, have a repulsive sinister aspect, which almost reminds one of the restless and comfortless throng of the spirits of the damned.
The great court of the Exchange is surrounded by covered arcades, on which inscriptions point out to the merchants of every nation their several places of assembling. In the centre stands a statue of Charles the Second, who built this edifice. Its port and bearing precisely express the man whom history describes; not handsome, but somewhat graceful, and with an inveterate levity of features, composed, as if in mockery, to seriousness: a levity which nothing could correct, because it sprang from mediocrity, and which made this king as agreeable and careless a ‘roué’ as he was a worthless ruler. In niches above stand the busts of other English sovereigns. I have already mentioned Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth. They would be striking, independently of all associations;—- Henry, fat and contented, and with an expression of wanton cruelty: Elizabeth, with an air of masculine greatness, and yet of feminine spite. The busts are doubtless copied from the best originals by Holbein. On this story is the celebrated Lloyd’s Coffee House, the dirtiest place of the kind in London, which exhibits few traces of the millions daily exchanged in it.