INTRODUCTION. 



xix 



deserting the country for the city, is that our towns are 

 still built upon a plan worthy of the dark ages, and 

 barely justifiable where the breath of the meadow sweeps 

 through the high street. Another notion is that the expense 

 of such improvements must always prevent them from being 

 carried out. " No labour/'' says Emerson — ^' no labour, 

 pains, temperance, poverty, nor exercise, that can gain 

 health must be grudged ; for sickness is a cannibal which ' 

 eats up all *the life and youth it can lay hold of, and absorbs 

 its own sons and daughters. And shall we spare even less 

 in the attempt to provide for the bodily health and happi- 

 ness of three millions of men closely packed in a city grow- 

 ing faster than the giant bamboo ? 



The real want is a want of plan ; and that it is to be hoped 

 Parliament will soon give us power to obtain. At present this 

 want is glaringly apparent not only in the central and more 

 crowded parts, but all round London, where admirable pre- 

 parations may be seen for the formation of a mighty cordon 

 of suburban St. Gileses twenty years hence. Next comes 

 the question of expense, and from that neither autocrats 

 nor parliaments can so readily relieve us. Is it too much 

 to hope that a portion of our vast expenditure for arsenals, 

 armies, fleets, and fortifications may some day be diverted 

 to making such alterations in our cities as will render 

 possible in them the rearing of worthy representatives of 

 the English race ? Let us hope not ; but supposing that 

 we should never see even the dawn of so desirable an era, 

 and that money should still be profusely spent in every way 

 but that of rendering our cities worthy of our time, our 

 knowledge, our civilization, and our race, there yet remains 

 a course by which we may effect some good without in- 

 creasing the expenditure we bestow on parks and public 

 gardens generally, and that is by a complete alteration in the 

 direction of the outlay. 



Our public gardening differs chiefly from that of Paris 

 and other continental cities by keeping itself away from 

 the very parts where its presence is most waDted. We 

 have parks almost prairie-like in their roominess, yet 

 locomotion is scarcely possible in those parts of the city 



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