EAST LONDON 195 



live. Hackney Downs is, however, used as a 

 feeding ground by a few thrushes and other 

 birds that inhabit some of the adjacent private 

 gardens where there are trees and shrubs. 



Victoria Park contains 244 acres, to whicli 

 may be added the 20 acres of Hackney Common, 

 and is rather more than two- thirds as large as 

 Hyde Park. Having been in existence for 

 upwards of twenty years, it is one of the oldest 

 of our new parks, and is important on account 

 of its large size, also because it is the only park 

 in the most populous metropolitan district. 



If it were possible to view it with the East- 

 enders' eyes — eyes accustomed to prospects so 

 circumscribed and to so unlovely an aspect of 

 things — it might seem like a paradise, with its 

 wide green spaces, its groves and shrubberies, 

 and lakes and wooded islands. To the dwellers in 

 West and South-west London it has a somewhat 

 depressing appearance, a something almost of 

 gloom, as if Nature herself in straying into such 

 a region had put off her brilliance and freshness 

 to be more in tune with her human children. 

 The air is always more or less smoke-laden in 

 that part. That forest of innumerable chimneys, 

 stretching away miles and miles o\'er all that 



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