It is half-past four in the afternoon, and the fashionable world (who dine at seven all over England) is now taking its morning airing. If you will sit down on one of these solid-looking seats under the shadow of this large elm, you will see such a display of equipage, pass you in the course of a single hour, as no other part of the world can parallel. This broad well-macadamized carriage-drive, which makes a circuit of some 4 or 5 miles in Hyde Park, is, at this moment, fairly filled with private carriages of all degrees. Here are heavy coaches and four, with postillions and footmen, and massive carriages emblazoned with family crests and gay with all the brilliancy of gold and crimson liveries; yonder superb barouche with eight spirited horses and numerous outriders, is the royal equipage, and as you lean forward to catch a glimpse of the sovereign, the close coach of the hero of Waterloo, the servants with cockades in their hats, dashes past you the other way at a rate so rapid that you doubt if he who rides within, is out merely for an ailing.

Yonder tasteful turn-out with liveries of a peculiar delicate mulberry, with only a single tall figure in the coach, is the Duke of Devonshire's. Here is the carriage of one of the carriages roll by, and you are leas astonished at the numberless superb equipages or the beauty of the horses, than at the old-world air of the footmen in gold and silver lace, gaudy liveries, spotless linen and snowy silk stockings. Some of the grand old coachmen in full powdered wigs, decked in all the glory of laced coats and silken calves, held the ribbons with such a conscious air of imposing grandeur that I willingly accepted them as the tree-poenoias, the most blooming blossoms of this parterte of equipage. It seemed to me that there may be something comfortable in thus hanging all the trappings of station on the backs of coachman and footman, if one must be bothered with such things - so that one may lean back quietly in plain clothes in the well-stuffed seat of his private carriage.

But do not let us loiter away all our time in a single scene in Hyde Park. A few steps farther on is Rotten Row, (rather an odd name for an elegant place,) the chosen arena of fashionable equestrians. The English know too well the pleasures of riding, to gallop on horse-back over hard pavements, and Rotten Row is a soft circle of a couple of miles, in the park, railed off for this purpose, where your horse's feet have an elastic surface to travel over. Hundreds of fair equestrians, with fathers, brothers, or friends, for companions, are here enjoying a more lively and spirited exercise, than the languid inmates of the carriages we have just left behind us. The English women rise in the saddle, like male riders, and at first sight they look awkwardly and less gracefully to our eyes - but you soon see that they also sit more firmly and ride more boldly, than ladies on our side of the water.

To stand by and see others ride, seems to me always too tantalizing to be long endured as a pastime - even where the scene is as full of novelty and variety as this. Let us go on, therefore. This beautiful stream of water, which would be called a pretty "creek" at home, is the Serpentine river, which has been made to meander gracefully through Hyde Park, and wonderfully does its bright water enhance the beauty of the verdure and the charm of the whole landscape. As we stand on the bridge, and look up and down the river, amid the rich groves and across the green lawns, the city wholly shut out by groves and plantations, how finely one feels the contrast of art and nature to be realised here.

That delicious band of music which you hear now, is in Kensington gardens, and only a belt of trees and yonder iron gate, separate the latter from Hyde Park. Let us join the crowd of persons of all ages, collected in the great walk, under the shade of gigantic elm trees, to hear the music. It is a well known air of Donizetti's, and as your eye glances over the company, perhaps some five or six thousand persons, who form the charmingly grouped, out-of-door audience,(for the afternoon is a bright one,) and as you see the radiant pleasure-sparkle in a thousand happy faces, young and old, who are here enjoying a little pleasant mingling of heaven and earth, in an innocent manner, you cannot but be struck with the fact, that if there is a duty belonging to good governments, next to protecting the lives and property of the people, it is that of providing public parks for the pent up inhabitants of cities.

"Imperial Kensington" is not only more spacious and grand than Hyde Park, but it has a certain antique stateliness, which touches my fancy and pleases me more. The trees are larger and more grove-like, and the broad glades of soft green turf are of a darker and richer green, and invite you to a more private and intimate confidence than any portions of Hyde Park. The grand avenue of Elms at the farther part of Kensington Gardens, coming suddenly into it from the farther Bayswater gate, is one of the noblest geometric groves in any city, and was laid out and planted, I believe, in King William's time. An avenue some hundreds of years old, is always majestic and venerable, and when not one American in fifty that visits Hyde Park, ever gets far enough into the depths of its enjoyment to explore this avenue in Kensington Gardens.

No carriages or horses are permitted in Kensington Gardens, bat its broad glades and shadowy lawns, are sacred to pedestrians, and are especially the gambol-fields of thousands of lovely children, who, attended by their nurses, make a kind of infant Arcadia of these solemn old groves of the monarch of Dutch tastes. Even the dingy old brick Palace of Kensington, which overlooks one side of the great lawn, cannot chase away the bright dimples from the rosy faces of the charming children one sees here, and the symbols of natural aristocracy - beauty and intelligence, set upon these young faces, were to my eyes a far more agreeable study than those of accident, birth, and fortune, which are so gaudily blazoned forth in Hyde Park.