I fancied that they took but a doubtful pleasure, being half
affrighted at the wide, empty space overhead and round about them,
finding the air too little medicated with smoke, soot, and graveyard
exhalations, to be breathed with comfort, and feeling shelterless and
lost because grimy London, their slatternly and disreputable mother, had
suffered them to stray out of her arms.
Passing among these holiday-people, we come to one of the gate-ways of
Greenwich Park, opening through an old brick wall. It admits us from the
bare heath into a scene of antique cultivation and woodland ornament,
traversed in all directions by avenues of trees, many of which bear
tokens of a venerable age. These broad and well-kept pathways rise and
decline over the elevations and along the bases of gentle hills which
diversify the whole surface of the Park. The loftiest and most abrupt of
them (though but of very moderate height) is one of the earth's noted
summits, and may hold up its head with Mont Blanc and Chimborazo, as
being the site of Greenwich Observatory, where, if all nations will
consent to say so, the longitude of our great globe begins. I used to
regulate my watch by the broad dial-plate against the Observatory-wall,
and felt it pleasant to be standing at the very centre of Time and
Space.
There are lovelier parks than this in the neighborhood of London, richer
scenes of greensward and cultivated trees; and Kensington, especially,
in a summer afternoon, has seemed to me as delightful as any place can
or ought to be, in a world which, some time or other, we must quit.
Pages:
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110