so LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



an average of 43,000 daily. Its success was pheno- 

 menal also from a financial point of view, as after all 

 expenses were deducted there was a surplus of ;^ 150,000, 

 with which the land from the Park to South Kensington 

 was purchased, on which the Albert Hall and museums 

 have been built. 



It seems to have been the complete originality of 

 the whole structure that captivated all beholders. In 

 his memoirs the eighth Duke of Argyll refers to the 

 opening as the most beautiful spectacle he had ever 

 seen. " Merely," he writes, " as a spectacle of joy and 

 of supreme beauty, the opening of the Great Exhibition 

 of 1 85 I stands in my memory as a thing unapproachable 

 and alone. This supreme beauty was mainly in the 

 building, not in its contents, nor even in the brilliant 

 and happy throng that filled it. The sight was a new 

 sensation, as if Fancy had been suddenly unveiled. 

 Nothing like it had ever been seen before — its light- 

 someness, its loftiness, its interminable vistas, its aisles 

 and domes of shining and brilliant colouring." 



It was with the recollection of this world-famous 

 Exhibition fresh in men's minds that the site for the 

 Albert Memorial was chosen. The idea conceived by 

 Sir Gilbert Scott was the reproduction on a large scale 

 of a mediaeval shrine or reliquary. When it was erected 

 an alteration was made in some of the avenues in Ken- 

 sington Gardens, so as to bring one into line with the 

 Memorial. A fresh avenue of elms and planes straight 

 to the monument was planted, which joined into the 

 original one, and a few trees were dotted about to break 

 the old line. As first planned, the avenue must have 

 commanded a view of Paddington Church steeple in 

 the vista. 



