132 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 
The Embankment Gardens, between Westminster and 
Blackfriars, are much frequented. At all seasons of the 
year the seats are crowded, and now, with the statues, 
bands playing in summer, refreshment buffet, and news¬ 
paper kiosk, they look more like a foreign garden than 
the usual solemn squares of London. During the 
dinner-hour they are filled with the printers from the 
many newspaper offices near, and the band was in the 
first instance paid for by the Press. 
They are divided into three sections, and measure 
ten acres in all, not including the garden beyond the 
Victoria Tower. The peace has been utterly destroyed 
by the din of trams, which are for ever passing and re¬ 
passing, and it is much to be feared that the trees next 
the river, which were growing so well, will not withstand 
the ill-treatment they have received-—the cutting of 
roots and depriving them of moisture. The Gardens 
are entirely on the ground made up when the Embank¬ 
ment was formed, between 1864 and 1870. 
The Gardens were opened in 1870, but many improve¬ 
ments have since been made in the design, and various 
statues put up to famous men. One is to John Stuart 
Mill, and at the Westminster end, one of William 
Tyndall, the translator of the New Testament and Penta¬ 
teuch, to which translation is due much of the beautiful 
language of the Authorised Version of the Bible. 
Of the old gardens and entrances to the great houses 
which stretched the whole length of the river bank, from 
Westminster and Whitehall to the City, only one trace 
remains. It is the Water Gate of York House. The 
low level on which it stands, below the terrace end of 
Buckingham Street, shows to what point the river rose. 
York House was so called as it was the town house of 
