Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/9

Rh



my remarks on the increasing beauty of London, under the head 'Kingsway and Aldwych' (10 S. iv. 361), I partially reviewed what had been done during the last sixty years in the making of new thoroughfares and the improvement of old. It will now be a pleasure to me to extend the reference to other work accomplished in the advance so interesting and satisfactory to all Londoners.

The ardent demand for width and open spaces, parks, gardens, and playgrounds, has been noticed, and some work in that direction has had mention. In Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, originally one expanse, we have a grand inheritance. The Park and the Gardens have been carefully preserved, and progressive taste in the culture and arrangement of flowers and shrubs (especially of the sumptuous rhododendron) has greatly enhanced their beauty. A great work here has been the rectification of the Serpentine, the necessary complement of the landscape. Its existence has not been happy. Made for pleasure and ornament by Queen Caroline in 1730, it had nevertheless become the filth deposit of a district of growing London. The polluted West Bourn was long suffered to bring down the sewage, and although the evil stream had been diverted some years before the "forties," the horrid deposit remained, and was even augmented at times of flood. The Metropolitan Drainage scheme, a work of great magnitude which must have mention here, although, as underground, it did not affect the outward beauty of London finally shut off all sewer communication with the Serpentine; but not until ten years later (1870) were the cleaning, deepening, and shaping of the lake effected. And although its present supply of water from wells and surface drainage, and occasionally from the metropolitan system, is not generous, we have now a handsome lake. Green Park and St. James's, as the satellites of Hyde Park, have shared in the advance of enlightened culture. Regent's Park and the much loved "Zoo" have also progressed; and in the more modern London the old, wholesome example has been followed in the making of Victoria, Battersea, and several minor parks. Not only this, but every green and common has become a pleasaunce: and the grand old squares are more carefully tended, their green lawns and noble trees (wonderful in the heart of London) compensating us for the clouded skies and wet weather we sometimes find depressing. Finally, in the list of these open spaces come the last homes of past generations: the burial-grounds of the dead have become the gardens of the living, in some instances the playground of children.

It was about the end of the forties that the building of Gothic churches was revived. Greek churches, correct or incorrect, and built to serve equally the living and the dead, had been long in vogue; now the mediaeval English form again commended itself. It is not becoming to criticize severely the first examples of the revival, or even the "restorations" then effected; mistakes no doubt were made, and it would be sad indeed if after sixty years of building nothing had been learnt. One of the first