Gardens,--the beauty of arrangement, the grandness of the scale, &c.,
strike him forcibly; but his keen inquiring mind, and his accurately
recording pen, have enabled him to afford his countrymen information
which most of my co-members in the said Society were previously
unconscious of. He tells them, "It is under control of the English
Government, and subject to the same degradation as Westminster, St.
Paul's, &c."--Starting from this basis, which only wants truth to make
it solid, he complains of "the meanness of reducing the nation to the
condition of a common showman;" the trifling mistake of confounding
public and private property moves his democratic _chivalry_, and he
takes up the cudgels for the masses. I almost fear to give the sentence
publicity, lest it should shake the Ministry, and be a rallying-point
for Filibustero Chartists. My anticipation of but a moderate circulation
for this work must plead my excuse for not withholding it. "The
Government basely use, without permission, the authority of the people's
name, to make them sharers in a disgrace for which they alone are
responsible. A stranger, in paying his shilling for admission into an
exhibition, which has been dubbed nation (by whom?) in contradistinction
from another in the Surrey Gardens, very naturally suspects that the
people are partners in this contemptible transaction.... The English
people are compelled to pay for the ignominy with which their despotic
rulers have loaded them." Having got his foot into this mare's nest, he
finds an egg a little further on, which he thus hatches for the American
public: "Englishmen not only regard eating as the most inestimable
blessing of life, when they enjoy it themselves, but they are always
intensely delighted to see it going on. The Government charge an extra
shilling at the Zoological Gardens on the days that the animals are fed
in public; but, as much as an Englishman dislikes spending money, the
extraordinary attraction never fails to draw," &c.

From the Gardens he visits Chelsea Hospital, where his _keen
discriminating powers_ having been sharpened by the demand for a
shilling--the chief object of which demand is to protect the pensioners
from perpetual intrusion--he bursts forth in a sublime magnifico
Kentuckyo flight of eloquence: "Sordid barbarians might degrade the
wonderful monuments of their more civilized ancestors by charging
visitors to see them; but to drag from their lowly retreat these ma