by Henry James

“ The statue stares across the interval at the castle, and the great avenue—-thanks to it's very perfection—-looks like a much smaller affair than it is. But nothing in Windsor park is small. I drove for some fifteen miles, and everywhere the great trees were scattered over the slopes and lawns; everywhere there was a glimpse of browsing deer; everywhere, at the end of cross-roads, the same wooded horizon. It is the perfection of park scenery, the noblest of all parks. I drove to Virginia Water, and left my carriage to come and meet me at some unknown point, to which my driver directed my steps. ”

“ The first time the observant stranger betakes himself to the park, he certainly is struck with the splendour of the show. There seems to be so much of everything; there are so many carriages, so many horses, so many servants, so many policemen, so many people in the carriages, on horseback, in the chairs, on foot. The observant stranger is again reminded of those constant factors in every more distinctively “social” spectacle in England—-the boundless wealth and the boundless leisure. ”

“ The school children, moreover, with their dusky pinafores and clumsy gambols, their tea tables and omnibuses, all, for reasons best known to themselves, herd together near the park gates. Ten minutes' walk will carry you out of sight or sound of them; and you may stroll down the great vistas of horse-chestnut without the fear of encountering any object more displeasing than a young man on an occasional bench, encircling the waist of his sweetheart, or a young person sketching difficult foliage at the base of one of the trees. ”

“ These simple festivals are celebrated within the enclosure of Bushey park, just beyond the palace gardens. There would be something inhuman in saying that they spoil the place for the solitary, selfish stroller; inasmuch as they are a source of entertainment to crowds of underfed little Londoners, who make a juvenile uproar under the great horse-chestnuts. I hasten, therefore, to say that on the three or four occasions when I have spent the afternoon at Hampton Court, the presence of the London contingent has never been fatal to my enjoyment. ”

“ Londoners appreciate their river in the highest degree; and they manifest their regard in a thoroughly practical fashion. They use the Thames: it might almost be said they abuse it. They use it, I mean, for pleasure; for above Chelsea bridge there are happily few traces of polluting traffic. When once indeed, going up the stream, you fairly emerge from the region of the London bridges, the Thames turns rural with surprising quickness. At every bend and reach it throws off something of it's metropolitan degradation; with each successive mile it takes on another prettiness. ”

“ To the contemplative stranger who permits himself not only to talk sentimental nonsense, but to think it, it seems as if, somehow, all England had been gathered up into such a place—-as if nothing less than her glorious past, her wealth, her power, her honour, her uninvaded centuries, had been needed to produce it. ”

“ On the other hand, the Squares and Crescents, the Roads and Gardens, are too rigidly, too blankly genteel. They are enlivened by groups of charming children, coming out to walk with their governesses or nursemaids, and by the figures of superior flunkies, lingering, in the consciousness of elegant leisure, on the doorstep. ”

“ Opposite, on the other side of the river, are the villas and lawns of Twickenham. Close at hand, among converging, overshadowing elms, is a strange, haunted-looking mansion, with weedy gardens and foreign medallions set in it's face. Beyond this are the great botanical gardens of Kew; behind is Sudbrook park and the greater extent of Richmond park. Staying there, one need not be at loss for a walk. ”

“ The place has such an honest, friendly charm, that it seems good-naturedly to refuse to be vulgarised; and your fellow cockneys become, as it were, a part of the homely animation of the landscape, like the greedy swans in the canal or the very tame deer in the park. ”

“ If the spectators testify to English leisure, the carriages testify more particularly to English incomes. To keep a carriage and pair in London costs, I believe, about five hundred pounds a year; the number of people driving about at this expense defies any powers of calculation at the command of the contemplative stranger. The carriages flock into the park in thousands; they roll along in dense, far-stretching masses ”

“ In Hyde park you see fine people; in Kensington Gardens you see only fine trees; and the observant stranger feels that it is upon eminent specimens of the human rather than of the vegetable race that he should bestow his attention. Every one in London, as the phrase is, goes to Hyde park of a fine afternoon ”

“ During a series of suburban afternoons it often happens that one applies for the evening meal at a tavern of prepossessing aspect, but usually with no greater profit than the right to register one's experience in that list of strange anomalies in which the tradition of English “comfort” is so prolific. One day I came down the river to Teddington, which I reached at half-past seven in the evening. As I had the prospect of not arriving in London till nearly ten o'clock, I went in quest of a house of entertainment. ”

“ Leisure is suggested even more forcibly if he goes to the park of a fine summer morning. In the afternoon people may be supposed to have brought the days labours to a close, to have done their usual stint of work and earned the right to fiâner. But American eyes do not easily accustom themselves to the sight of a great multitude in a busy metropolis, beginning the days entertainment, a couple of hours after breakfast, by going to sit in a public garden and watch several hundred ladies and gentlemen gallop past them on horseback. ”

“ The innumerable boats, the little green carpet-patches on the banks, the perfectly appointed cottages, the people sitting on the painted-looking lawns, with whom you can almost converse from across the stream—-these things suggest a kind of imminent repletion, a climax of maturity. And yet I don't suppose that another seasons sunshine will begin to bruise the mellow earth, or that the boats will crowd the water out of it's channel. The villas and cottages will go on being let as eligible residences, and young men in white flannel will feather their oars for all generations to come. ”

“ During an idle lounge in the mellowing, fading light, the beautiful quality of the place steals irresistibly over your spirit, the air seems charged with serene antiquity and accumulated peace, and the rustle of the leaves strikes you as the continuous sound made in their passage by the hours and years which have given all this it's quiet chance to grow. ”

“ A young English girl, in a habit without a wrinkle, mounted upon a beautiful English horse, with health in her cheek and modesty in her eye, pulling up, flushed and out of breath, at the end of a long gallop, is a picture in which I can pretend to pick no flaws. ”

“ It is the prettiest sight possible, and it shows you the finest side of English idleness. There is every kind of horse save the ugly one, and if it is not quite equally true that there is every kind of rider save the bad one, at least the bad one's are few and far between. The good Homer sometimes nods, and the good Englishman has sometimes a slippery saddle. ”

“ There is nothing more charming in Europe than the great terrace at Saint Germain; there are few things so picturesque as Richmond bridge and the view thence along either bank of the Thames. There are certainly ugly things enough in the neighbourhood of London, and there is much agreeable detail to be found within an hour's drive of several American towns ”

“ The “observant stranger” ought perhaps to be ashamed to confess to such levity, but a couple of years of indoor sight-seeing will have done a good deal toward making him ask himself whether the most beautiful rooms in the world are worth visiting in one of these bands of centripetal stragglers. The thing is disagreeable; one is not bound to say how or why. It is disagreeable to wander about any house—-be it even Windsor Castle—-without entering into relation with the master ”

“ Cooks tourists, by a droning custodian, and shuffling in dull, gregarious fashion over the miles of polished floor and through the vistas of gilded chambers in which they are requested not to “touch”—-when the memory of this ordeal, frequently repeated in earlier years, comes back to me, I cannot help feeling a diminution of regret. ”

“ It is, however, one's fellow starers, one's fellow shufflers, that make the shoe pinch. It appears to be a fundamental rule of human nature, lying lower than the plummet of analysis will drop, that one shall, for the time, despise such people. ”

“ Women, all over the world, have less to do than men; and these unmortgaged hours are, on the ladies parts, comparatively natural. What an American particularly notices is the number of disengaged men; well dressed, gentlemanly, agreeable fellows, who have nothing more urgent to do, at twelve o'clock in the morning, than to stroll about under green trees, with a stick and a pair of gloves in their hands, or to sit with their legs crossed and murmur soft nothings to a lady in a Gainsborough hat. ”

“ To people brought up in these traditions there is, therefore, something very—-what shall I call it?—-very picturesque, in these elegant matutinal groups, for whom the work of life is done to order, and who lose so little time of a morning in beginning the play. ”

“ The peculiar function of the neighbourhood of most foreign towns, on the other hand, is to be verdant and residential, thickly inhabited, and replete with devices for making habitation agreeable. Some of the prettiest things in England and France are to be found in the immediate vicinity of the capitals of those countries. ”

“ The Suburbs of London THE term “suburban” has always seemed to me to have a peculiarly English meaning. It suggests images that are not apt to present themselves in America. American cities have suburbs; but they have to a very limited extent what may be called suburban scenery. The essence of suburban scenery in the western world is to be straggling, shabby, inexpensive ”

“ On the continent, perhaps, you can keep better terms with them; they are usually, like yourself, foreigners in the country, and this gives them a cosmopolitan, independent air which tempers their subjection to the housekeeper or the beadle. ”

“ It is certainly a very brilliant mob, and the copper coin which you pay for the use of your little chair is a small equivalent for the greatness of the privilege. Before you is the Drive, with it's serried ranks of carriages ”

“ The men are attending to business; they are immersed in offices, counting-houses, and “stores.” The ladies are ordering the dinner, setting the machinery of the household in motion for the day, finding occupation among their children. ”