1828.] Metropolitan Improvements. 955 
stand, to be ten or a dozen feet above the level of Pall.Mall. The right 
wing of the terrace is all in carcase, and undergoing the disgraceful 
process of cement—we say disgraceful, because buildings of this calibre 
—and improvements of this magnitude, in such a metropolis as that of 
England, ought not to be executed in such a perishable and gingerbread 
commodity. 
In the left wing Mr. Nash, or rather the government, has been treated 
very shabbily by certain noble applicants for the ground: When the 
plan was first proposed for building dwellings on the site of Carlton 
House gardens, the applications for the ground was so numerous, that 
Mr. Nash had the greatest difficulty not to offend, in selecting the highest 
of the aristocratic applicants, who wished to place their domiciles on the 
ci-devant seat of royalty. 
Either the lack of amoney, change of disposition, or some other cause, 
has however prevented many of these selected applicants from confirming 
their agreements, and a great portion of the ground has, therefore, been left 
uponhand. This ground might easily be disposed of to building specula- 
tion, but such a disposal of it would risk the derangement of the original plan 
of keeping this ‘ quarter’ a kind of reserve for the élite of the high people 
ef London. To prevent, however, the plan from remaining incomplete, 
and the place thus becoming for some years a detriment and nuisance to 
its nighbourhood rather than an ornament to the park and the metropolis, 
Mr. Nash, has with a spirit worthy of his projected improvements, under- 
taken the whole of the remaining buildings on his own account, and 
the foundations are now actually laying at his expense. 
_ The New United Service Club erecting under the superintendence of 
Mr. Nash, and the Atheneum building under the direction of Mr. 
Decimus Burton are also rapidly proceeding. These buildings form the 
entrance to the new square opposite Waterloo-place, and are most inju- 
diciously made dissimilar—a circumstance which is in some measure 
explained by Mr. Burton in his evidence before the Committee of the 
House of Commons. 
In the United Service Club are two rooms of one hundred feet by fifty 
the floors are constructed of cast iron girders, which Mr. Nash has com- 
yelled most of the lessees in this part of his plan to use in their new 
duildings.— At the back of each of these Club Houses and of the houses 
in Pall Mall, is a large ornamental garden which will indeed, be a most 
desirable addition to the improvements; and, when Carlton House shall 
still have its opening to Charing Cross through the end of Warwick and 
Cockspur Streets, this will certainly be one of the finest parts of the 
metropolis, and be an equal credit to the projector, with the general plan 
of the New Street. Would we could say as much for the detail both of 
the public and private buildings which are comprised in these improve- 
ments, as we can of the general plan of them. 
But, while the monopoly of the Board of Works, which has in the 
late evidence given before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, 
been proved to confine all the public works to three architects only, all 
competition of taste and talent is prevented, and these three have more 
to do than twenty superior men could do sufficient justice to.—It is this 
that crowds our streets with the heavy composition of pilaster and 
columns, to which Mr. Smirke lends his name—though he really ought 
to be ashamed to permit them to come out of his office, looking like the 
cruder productions of a mere schoolboy in the art. In Mr. Soane, and 
