STREET GARDENS. 167 



monument. If tlie belt is Taried by a few projections or 

 clumps in the inside, its external continuity is neverthe- 

 less rigidly maintained, and tbe usual feeling communi- 

 cated to you in passing round a square is that you are 

 walking in the front of a row of houses, but at the back 

 of a garden. The internal arrangements are often little 

 superior to the external, and often they are worst where 

 most might have been expected. We have seen, for 

 example, a frill of shi'ubs added to the original belt, and 

 two dull outlines produced instead of one. AVe have seen 

 parallel terraces which are not parallel in their levels, and 

 curtailed moreover of theii' fair proportions by an oblique 

 walk slanting across the base. With a varied proprietary 

 and hundreds of overlooking windows, the ruling idea 

 in the laying out of street gardens seems to be their 

 seclusion fi^om the ^-ulgar eyes of passengers on the 

 pavement. The inhabitants of such places not imfre- 

 quently complain of their exclusion from the parks and 

 gardens of country gentlemen, and this often in entire 

 oblirion of their own equally illiberal and more inconsis- 

 tent exclusiveness in regard to their city paradises. But 

 if street gardens are inferior in design, they are scarcely 

 less so in their management. A directory of worthy 

 citizens, with a jobbing gardener as their executive, often 

 perpetrate great barbarities on the unfortunate shrubs 

 and trees gi'owing under their regime. "VMiat ^rith the 

 manifest errors in the la}T.ng-out of the gi'ounds, the 

 mutilations inflicted on trees and shrubs in palpable 

 ignorance or contempt of arboreal beauty, the ineritably 

 injurious effects of dust and smoke, — the whole influences, 

 natural and artificial, resulting in a dainty, but puny, 

 ruS'iti-urbishness, as it has been expressively called, — we 

 have sometimes been tempted to wish that squares were 



