92 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



typical of the age, as Elizabethan or Tudor architecture 

 is of theirs, and as such it is best to treat Regent's Park, as 

 an interesting example of early nineteenth-century taste. 



This ground was country when building was begun, 

 and when one thinks of the streets and crescents that 

 grow up when the country touches the town, and the in- 

 congruous ugliness of most of them, there is much to 

 be said for the substantial uniformity of Regent's Park. 

 What can be argued from the surroundings of the other 

 parks? Would Regent's Park have been improved by 

 the erection of rows of houses of the Queen Anne's 

 Mansion type ? One cannot help wondering what Stowe 

 would have thought of such a production, when he 

 instances "a remarkable punishment of Pride in high 

 buildings," how a man who built himself a tower in 

 Lime Street, to overlook his neighbours, was very soon 

 " tormented with gouts in his joynts, of his hands and 

 legs" — that he could go no "further than he was led, 

 much lesse was he able to climbe " his tower ! What 

 retribution would he have thought sufficiently severe for 

 the perpetrators of Park Row Buildings, New York, with 

 their thirty-two storeys ? 



Anyhow, Regent's Park was welcomed by the gene- 

 ration who watched it grow. A writer in 1823 says: 

 *' When first we saw that Marylebone Fields were en- 

 closed, and that the hedgerow walks which twined through 

 them were gradually being obliterated and the whole 

 district artificially laid out, ... we underwent a painful 

 feeling or two. ... A few years, however, have elapsed, 

 and we are not only reconciled to the change alluded to, 

 but rejoice in it. A noble Park is rapidly rising up, and 

 a vast space, close to the metropolis, not only preserved 

 from the encroachment of mean buildings, but laid out 



