But
Greenwich, too, is beautiful,--a spot where the art of man has conspired
with Nature, as if he and the great mother had taken counsel together
how to make a pleasant scene, and the longest liver of the two had
faithfully carried out their mutual design. It has, likewise, an
additional charm of its own, because, to all appearance, it is the
people's property and play-ground in a much more genuine way than the
aristocratic resorts in closer vicinity to the metropolis. It affords
one of the instances in which the monarch's property is actually the
people's, and shows how much more natural is their relation to the
sovereign than to the nobility, which pretends to hold the intervening
space between the two: for a nobleman makes a paradise only for himself,
and fills it with his own pomp and pride; whereas the people are sooner
or later the legitimate inheritors of whatever beauty kings and queens
create, as now of Greenwich Park. On Sundays, when the sun shone, and
even on those grim and sombre days when, if it do not actually rain,
the English persist in calling it fine weather, it was good to see how
sturdily the plebeians trod under their own oaks, and what fulness of
simple enjoyment they evidently found there. They were the people,--not
the populace,--specimens of a class whose Sunday clothes are a distinct
kind of garb from their week-day ones; and this, in England, implies
wholesome habits of life, daily thrift, and a rank above the lowest.
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