Chap. VIII.] 



SQUARES, PLACES, ETC. 



121 



road would be laid down long before the builder came to arrange 

 the ground as' seemed best to him. There they say to him : Here 

 you may build, but do not encroach on the space necessary for 

 public convenience ; and thus avoid the tortuous, close, and often 

 dirty suburban roads which tend to make many districts round 

 London unvisited by and unknown to all but their immediate 

 inhabitants. A broad and pleasant tree-planted road through 

 such a district would, by opening it up and making it attractive 

 to the inhabitants of London generally, prove as beneficial from a 

 commercial as from a sanitary and an aesthetic point of view. 

 And if such roads as convenience and 

 good taste demand existed in a city the 

 size of London, squares would be of less 

 importance. Our Thames Embankment, 

 for example, is better than a score of 

 squares. 



It can hardly be necessary to point out 

 the benefits that a square confers on the 

 district immediately around it. All, or 

 nearly all, our present expenditure for 

 public gardening is on the vast parks of 

 which London is happily the possessor. 

 As, however, many of the parks are 

 separated by miles from each other, the 

 squares or any open space is of the highest 

 importance. Parks for play and exercise, and beautiful garden 

 scenery, let us have by all means ; but our great want is the 

 smaller open spaces called squares, and wide roads planted with 

 trees. We have in London squares of various degrees of mag- 

 nitude and keeping, from the West Central squares, with their 

 fine old trees, to the new ones at Brompton ; from the wide 

 West-end square to the small dark grimy ones in Soho or the 

 City ; but even the best of them are badly kept, and unworthy of 

 London. No clear idea of what a square should be seems to have 

 been possessed by those who designed them. The chief feature 

 they have in common is a dirty and ugly crowded bank of Lilac 

 and other common shrubs just within the margin, to prevent a 

 view into them. 



There is nothing in any of our parks, there is no feature in 



" Thieves without and nothing to 

 steal withifL," 



Margin of a London Square, -with 

 Edge of Plantation designed to 

 cut off the View [Park Crescenf). 



