Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 046.djvu/225

1839.] There exists now-a-days no parallel to this lively picture of the beau monde of a hundred years ago taking the air in St James's Park—the fashionable world has receded westward; and, instead of promenading the Mall of St James's Park, now exhibits itself in carriages and on horseback within the magic circle of the ride, and adown the long prospective of the once-celebrated Rotten Row.

St James's of late years has become bourgeois—it is now emphatically the park of the people.

To King William and Queen Mary the public is indebted for the privilege of entering this Park by Spring Garden gate, as well as to several considerable improvements in the enclosure itself. But we will for the present suspend our historical enquiries, and, as we are here, take a look at St James's Park as it is.

This seat, on the southern bank of the canal, nearly midway between the eastern and western extremities of the Park, affords one of the best points of view, embracing the whole extent of the enclosure, from the parade at one end to the esplanade at the other. How boldly and well the Horse-Guards fills up the view to our right! There it stands—a plain, honest, erect, downright military structure, on parade, as straight and as stiff as one of its own sentinels on duty. It is not, certainly, a handsome building, but it has the look of being adapted to the business transacted within it; and if it does not please the eye, assuredly does not disgust it, like its ginger-bread friend on the opposite side. Behind the Horse-Guards we can just see the towering dome of St Paul's—northward, the light and elegant spire of St Martin's is visible over the Admiralty—and near it arises, in high contrast, the mustard-pot of the National Gallery—the pepper-boxes not being in this point of view visible. More to the westward, we have Carlton House Terrace, with the column erected to the memory of the late Duke of York—the dense foliage of the trees in the Mall shuts out the Palace of St James's, the residence of the Queen-Dowager, and the magnificent mansion of the Duke of Sutherland, from our view.

The vista to our left is terminated by Buckingham Palace, which was truly stigmatized by a Committee of the House of Commons as "contemptible in every point of view, and a standing disgrace to English architecture." It is lucky for the fame of the architect that this thing is beneath criticism—people shake their heads when they look at it, and turn away with silent contempt; the thing is so disgustingly brutal, that to waste words in abusing it, would be to abuse the very faculty of speech. And to think that the fellow who perpetrated this standing disgrace to English architecture died with his shoes off—who would be a petty larceny rogue, when a fellow like Nash escapes with impunity? In the first place, the thing is erected upon a declining site; it appears to be ashamed of itself, and seems to sneak down the off-side of the inclination on which it stands, as it would drown itself in the pond at the end of the Queen's garden. In the second place, the thing, although covering a great deal of ground, is contemptibly diminutive in all its parts; and in the third place, all these diminutive parts and parcels of the great contemptible whole are frittered into still more insignificant littleness, by the profusion of ill-judged and unmeaning ornament plastered over it every where like gold leaf on gingerbread! A French architect in London, writing to his friend at Paris, gives an account of this concern, which would be sufficiently ludicrous if it were not unfortunately much too true. The letter opens as follows:—

"My dear sair,—I shall now give you an account of de Royal Palace, called here de Buck-and-ham Palace, which is building for de English King in de spirit of Jean Bull plum-pudding and roast-beef taste, for which de English are so famous. It is great curiosity. In de first place, de pillars of de palace are made to represent English vegitable, as de sparrow-grass, de leek and de onion; den de entablatures or freizes are vary mosh enriched with leg of mutton and de pork, with vat dey call de garnish, all vary beautiful carved; den, on de impediment of de front, stand colossal figure of man-cook, with de large English toasting-fork in his hand, ready to put into de pot a vary large plum-pudding behind him, which is vary fine pudding, not de colour of black Christmas pudding, because de