William Cullen Bryant was an American poet, journalist and long-serving editor of the New York Evening Post. His best-known poems include Thanatopsis and To a Waterfowl.
William Cullen Bryant
The Letters of William Cullen Bryant
Ed. William Cullen Bryant II and Thomas G. Voss. Fordham University Press, 1975-1992. 6 volumes.
London, June 24, 1845...Nothing can be more striking to one who is accustomed to the little inclosures called public parks in our American cities, than the spacious, open grounds of London...North of Hyde Park, after passing a few streets, you reach the great square of Regent's Park, where, as you stand at one boundary the other is almost undistinguishable in the dull London atmosphere. North of this park rises Primrose Hill, a bare, grassy eminence, which I hear has been purchased for a public ground and will be planted with trees.
The American poet and newspaper editor was on a visit to Europe. A vigorous defender of human rights and prominent in the campaign to abolish slavery, his reformist zeal is evident in his response to what he saw on his travels.
All round these immense inclosures, presses the densest population of the civilized world. Within, such is their extent, is a fresh and pure atmosphere, and the odors of plants and flowers, and the twittering of innumerable birds more musical than those of our own woods, which build and rear their young here, and the hum of insects in the sunshine...These parks have been called the lungs of London, and so important are they regarded to the public health and the happiness of the people, that I believe a proposal to dispense with some part of their extent, and cover it with streets and houses, would be regarded in much the same manner as a proposal to hang every tenth man in London. They will probably remain public grounds as long as London has an existence