STREET GARDENS. 



229 



or clumps in tlie inside, its external continuity is nev- 

 ertheless rigidly maintained ; and the usual feeling 

 communicated to you, in passing round a square, is 

 that you are walking in the front of a row of houses, 

 but at the back of a garden. The internal arrange- 

 ments are often little superior to the external, and often 

 they are worst where most might have been expected. 

 "We have seen, for example, a frill of shrubs added to 

 the original belt, and two dull outlines produced in- 

 stead of one. We have seen parallel terraces which 

 are not parallel in their levels, and curtailed, moreover, 

 of their fair proportions by an oblique walk slanting 

 across the base. With . a varied proprietary and hun- 

 dreds of overlooking windows, the ruling idea in the 

 laying-out of street gardens seems to be their seclu- 

 sion from the vulgar eyes of passengers on the pave- 

 ment. The inhabitants of such places not unfrequently 

 complain of their exclusion from the parks and gar- 

 dens of country gentlemen, and this often in entire 

 oblivion of their own equally illiberal and more incon- 

 sistent exclusiveness in regard to their city paradises. 

 But if street gardens are ' inferior in design, they are 

 scarcely less so in their management. A directory of 

 worthy citizens, with a jobbing gardener as their ex- 

 ecutive, often perpetrate great barbarities on the unfor- 

 tunate shrubs and trees growing under their regime. 

 What with the manifest errors in the laying-out of the 

 grounds, the mutilations inflicted on trees and shrubs 

 in palpable ignorance or contempt of arboreal beauty, 

 the inevitably injurious effects of dust and smoke — 

 the whole influences, natural and artificial, resulting 

 in a dainty but puny rus-in-urbislmess, as it has been 

 expressively called, we have sometimes been tempted 



