Page:The Preservation of Places of Interest or Beauty, 1907.djvu/11

 with the past to overcome the impatience of the present. In England hitherto such a public opinion has been of small account. There are very few town walls remaining, and not even their sites have been preserved to the public. Only three years ago the walls of Berwick-on Tweed, built by Edward I. when Berwick was a place of supreme importance, were threatened by the Corporation of the town. Many fragments of the Roman wall of London have been discovered of recent years, but they have mostly been destroyed or buried as soon as discovered. On the continent the course of events has been a trifle less disastrous. In many German towns, where the walls themselves have disappeared, their site has remained a public possession in the shape of a pleasant garden, giving fresh air and the means of recreation to the inhabitants, as well as reminding them of the history of their city.

Take another class of cases. There are old Roman and British camps which at the present moment are being mutilated out of recognition merely to supply gravel and stone for public roads. Many abandoned castles and abbeys have been robbed of their stone to build cottages, even pig styes, for the peasants of the district. If great and notable memorials of past times are thus treated, what can we expect of those less remarkable survivals which are nevertheless so eloquent of a bye-gone day, those details, which unimportant in themselves, go to form the aspect of a place,—what the Germans have named the Stadtbild. Where population grows and the business of a place changes, it is inevitable that there should be changes also in the setting of the place. But it is not necessary that changes should be made thoughtlessly, as is too often the case.

If we turn to natural scenery, we find that not even the more striking manifestations of nature are safe from the hand of man. At the present moment the