140 THE PARKS AND GABDENS OP PAEIS. [Chap. IX. 



the people that has been more neglected than that of public 

 bathing. 



There is no city in which a series of convenient open-air 

 swiminihg-baths could be so economically made as in London. 

 Abundance of wide-spreading park and garden ground belonging 

 to the public is at hand in which capital sites occur. Our parks 

 are not like those of Paris, outside the town, but for the most 

 part quite surrounded by it, so that swimming-places in them 

 would be most convenient for the inhabitants of the surrounding 

 districts. Consider, for example, what a boon one or more small 

 swimming-lakes in Eegent's Park would prove to the districts 

 around it. The land in the possession of the public, the excava- 

 tion and proper shielding of such lake-baths by belts of varied 

 plantation would be quite easy and inexpensive. Something like 

 a model for an open-air swimming-bath already exists in Victoria 

 Park. Such baths once formed, the expense of maintaining them 

 would be little or no more than would be bestowed on the same 

 piece of ground if kept as a park or garden. Shrouded by 

 shrubbery, they could be used for fourteen hours of the summer 

 day, while, if their disposition were entrusted to a good land- 

 scape-gardener, they and their surroundings could be made 

 charming embellishments of our parks, now in many parts bare 

 and unattractive. It is needless to point out how beneficial such 

 a series of baths would prove to the population of London, by 

 placing within reach of all the means of practising in the open 

 air, and in the pleasantest manner, the doubly-useful exercise of 

 swimming. By the Serpentine, the army of the great unwashed 

 is so densely packed that none but those with the least-developed 

 sensibilities could enter the water ; indeed, it is not quite agreeable 

 to go near the margin when the crowd is away, for the authorities 

 make no sanitary provision whatever for the crowds, and the 

 place is filthy to a degree not pleasant to see illustrated within 

 a few hundred feet of the most fashionable lounge in Europe. A 

 good suggestion has been made as to bathing-places in the centre 

 of islands in such a piece of water as the Serpentine. More con- 

 venient would be little bays opening from the main sheet of water 

 and surrounded by dense plantations. 



It would be an excellent plan if roomy bathing-sheds were 

 also erected near the water's edge, near those bathing-places, but 



