92 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 
typical of the age, as Elizabethan or Tudor architecture 
is of theirs, and as such it is best to treat Regent’s Park as 
an interesting example of early nineteenth-century taste. 
This ground was country when building was begun, 
and when one thinks of the streets and crescents that 
grow up when the country touches the town, and the in¬ 
congruous ugliness of most of them, there is much to 
be said for the substantial uniformity of Regent’s Park. 
What can be argued from the surroundings of the other 
parks? Would Regent’s Park have been improved by 
the erection of rows of houses of the Queen Anne’s 
Mansion type ? One cannot help wondering what Stowe 
would have thought of such a production, when he 
instances “a remarkable punishment of Pride in high 
buildings,” how a man who built himself a tower in 
Lime Street, to overlook his neighbours, was very soon 
“ tormented with gouts in his joynts, of his hands and 
legs ”—that he could go no “ further than he was led, 
much lesse was he able to climbe ” his tower! What 
retribution would he have thought sufficiently severe for 
the perpetrators of Park Row Buildings, New York, with 
their thirty-two storeys ? 
Anyhow, Regent’s Park was welcomed by the gene¬ 
ration who watched it grow. A writer in 1823 says: 
“ When first we saw that Marylebone Fields were en¬ 
closed, and that the hedgerow walks which twined through 
them were gradually being obliterated and the whole 
district artificially laid out, ... we underwent a painful 
feeling or two. ... A few years, however, have elapsed, 
and we are not only reconciled to the change alluded to, 
but rejoice in it. A noble Park is rapidly rising up, and 
a vast space, close to the metropolis, not only preserved 
from the encroachment of mean buildings, but laid out 
