which kept the flame of the heated term from doing its worst. It hung,
diaphonous, in the dusty perspectives, but it gathered and thickened
about the squares and places, and subdued all edges, so that nothing cut
or hurt the vision.

I was glad of that, because I found one of my greatest pleasures in
looking at the massed tree-forms in those gardened-groves, which I never
penetrated. The greater parks are open to the public, but the squares
are enclosed by tall iron fences, and locked against the general with
keys of which the particular have the keeping in the houses about them.
It gave one a fine shiver of exclusion as populace, or mob, to look
through their barriers at children playing on the lawns within, while
their nurses sat reading, or pushed perambulators over the trim walks.
Sometimes it was even young ladies who sat reading, or, at the worst,
governesses. But commonly the squares were empty, though the grass so
invited the foot, and the benches in the border of the shade, or round
the great beds of bloom, extended their arms and spread their welcoming
laps for any of the particular who would lounge in them.

I remember only one of these neighborhood gardens which was open to the
public, and that was in the poor neighborhood which we lodged on the
edge of, equally with the edge of Belgravia. It was opened, by the great
nobleman who owned nearly the whole of that part of London, on all but
certain days of the week, with restrictions lettered on a board nearly
as big as the garden itself; but I never saw it much frequented, perhaps
because I usually happened upon it when it was locked against its
beneficiaries. Upon the whole, these London squares, though they
flattered the eye, did not console the spirit so much as the far uglier
places in New York, or the pretty places in Paris, which are free to
all. It can be said for the English way that when such places are free