132 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



The Embankment Gardens, between Westminster and 

 Blackfriars, are much frequented. At all seasons of the 

 year the seats are crowded, and now, with the statues, 

 bands playing in summer, refreshment buffet, and news- 

 paper kiosk, they look more like a foreign garden than 

 the usual solemn squares of London. During the 

 dinner-hour they are filled with the printers from the 

 many newspaper offices near, and the band was in the 

 first instance paid for by the Press. 



They are divided into three sections, and measure 

 ten acres in all, not including the garden beyond the 

 Victoria Tower. The peace has been utterly destroyed 

 by the din of trams, which are for ever passing and re- 

 passing, and it is much to be feared that the trees next 

 the river, which were growing so well, will not withstand 

 the ill-treatment they have received — the cutting of 

 roots and depriving them of moisture. The Gardens 

 are entirely on the ground made up when the Embank- 

 ment was formed, between 1864 and 1870. 



The Gardens were opened in 1870, but many improve- 

 ments have since been made in the design, and various 

 statues put up to famous men. One is to John Stuart 

 Mill, and at the Westminster end, one of William 

 Tyndall, the translator of the New Testament and Penta- 

 teuch, to which translation is due much of the beautiful 

 language of the Authorised Version of the Bible. 



Of the old gardens and entrances to the great houses 

 which stretched the whole length of the river bank, from 

 Westminster and Whitehall to the City, only one trace 

 remains. It is the Water Gate of York House. The 

 low level on which it stands, below the terrace end of 

 Buckingham Street, shows to what point the river rose. 

 York House was so called as it was the town house of 



