Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 046.djvu/230

222 being only separated from Kensington Gardens by a ha-ha—seems to be only a part of it. On the declivity of this hill is a grove, in which are two chalybeate springs. There is a footpath across this road to Kensington Gardens.

"On the south side of the Park are very handsome barracks for the Royal Horse Guards. And on this side are two carriage roads to Kensington, one of which is better known by the name of Rotten Row.

"These have become the resort of the fashionable world instead of the ring, and are much resorted to on Sundays.

"The open part of the Park was much resorted to till lately for the field-days and reviews of the horse and foot guards, as also for those of the volunteers, by which the sward of it was so much injured that it had become a dry sandy plain, with scarcely a vestige of verdure. At present, however, these exercises are forbidden, and the surface of the Park is sown with grass seeds, and covered with the mud taken from the bed of the Serpentine river, which will restore it to its pristine beauty."

This is truly a noble place—more extensive than the Green Park and the park of St James's put together. It unites the gentle and varied diversity of surface of the one, with the umbrageous shade of the other. The trees, too, have dignity in their decay, and the tout ensemble is that of a park of some noble house in the olden time—a thing not to be manufactured in a hurry. What a mob of people in carriages and on horseback; and what an admiring congregation of envious pedestrians, who console themselves for the want of an equipage in finding fault with the equipages of others, and flattering themselves when they do have a turn-out, they will do the trick in a superior style! Dreadful thing that gentlemen and ladies with so much taste should be so much in want of money, and find their chief consolation in observing how very badly monied people lay their money out!

That fine-looking man on the black horse—him, I mean, in the coat of indescribable green—I say indescribable, for it is neither bottle-green, pea-green, apple-green, olive-green, grass-green, nor invisible-green—who sits his horse sympathetically, as if he were part and parcel of the animal—is Count D'Orsay. Close at his heels you may observe a youth in a Chesterfield hat, with a gold chain wound twice round his neck, dipping into his waistcoat pocket, and coming out again. He joggles on his animal, and has an anxious expression of countenance, as if he were about to undergo some dreadful surgical operation, but which doubtless is derived from an apprehension that the waistband of his Sunday breeches is going to crack—that is Fitz-Wiggins, son to old Wiggins the retired cow-keeper of Canonbury Row, Islington. I know the fellow well. He is a gentility-monger; spends all his time and all his money in smelling after fashionable people; but, with all his exertions, the highest approach he ever made to genteel society was getting into the Garrick Club. He has a good horse, you see, and seems as much at home upon it as if he were mounted on one of his paternal cows. Alas, poor Wiggins!

There goes Count D'Orsay again. The more I look at him, the more I am surprised at the despotic authority that accomplished gentleman has long exercised in matters of dress. He is faultless, to be sure; I cannot say he is overdressed, and it is equally clear that he is not under-dressed. Still there is something about him that does not fulfil my preconceived idea of the rig-out of a perfect gentleman. His coat-collar is too much detached, which gives to the upper part of his figure an air of singularity—of a pretension to unapproachable perfection—which, of all things, your English gentleman studies to avoid. The pantaloon, too, embracing the hoby round the sole, and hardly exhibiting the toe, however well calculated to throw out the symmetrical leg in bold relief, gives to the foot something of a slippered air. But it is in the accompaniments of his habit that the Count D'Orsay mainly excels. No man living has such exquisite taste in the details. What expression in that hat! What tone, harmony, and keeping in that vest! What grace and elegance in the drapery of that stock! The Count is acknowledged to be, I had almost said, superhuman in stocks! Pray observe, if you please, sir, the style of the Count's spur. That spur, let me tell you, was designed by the Count himself. It was the admiration of every