L London has a peculiar fascination of its own, and to a vast number of English-speaking people all over the world it appeals with irresistible force. So much has been said and written about it that the theme might seem to be worn out, yet there are still fresh aspects to present, still hidden charms to discover, still deep problems to solve. The huge, unwieldly mass, which cannot be managed or legislated for as other towns, but has to be treated as a county, enfolds within its area all the phases of human life. It embraces every gradation from wealth to poverty, from the millionaire to the pauper alien. The collection of buildings which together make London are a most singular assortment of innumerable variations between beauty and ugliness, between palaces and works of art and hovels of sordid and unlovely squalor.

An Englishman must be almost without soul who can stand for the first time unmoved within the precincts of Westminster Abbey or look without satisfaction at the faultless proportions of St. Paul’s. The sense of possession, the pride of inheritance, are the uppermost feelings in his mind. But he who loves not only London itself with a patriotic veneration, but also his fellow-men, will not rest with the inspection of the beautiful. He will journey eastward into the heart of the mighty city, and see its seething millions at work, its dismal poverty, its relentless hardness. The responsibility of heirship comes over him, the sadness, the pathos, the evil of it all depresses him, the hopelessness of the contrast overpowers him; but apart from all ideas of social reform, from legislative action or philanthropic theories, there is one thin line of colour running through the gloomy picture. The parks and gardens of London form bright spots in the landscape. They are beyond the pale of controversy; they appeal to all sections of the community, to the workers as well as to the idlers, to the rich as well as to the poor, to the thoughtful as well as to the careless. From the utilitarian point of view they are essential. They bring new supplies of oxygen, and allow the freer circulation of health-giving fresh air. They are not less useful as places of exercise and recreation. They waft a breath of nature where it is most needed, and the part they play in brightening the lives of countless thousands cannot be over-estimated.

The parks and gardens of London have a past full of historical associations, and at the present time their full importance is slowly being realised. Much has been done to improve and beautify them, but much remains to be achieved in that direction before their capabilities will have been thoroughly developed. The opportunity is great, and if only the best use can be made of it London Parks could be the most beautiful as well as the most useful in the world. It is impossible to praise or criticise them collectively, as they have different origins, are administered by separate bodies, and have distinct functions to perform. It cannot be denied that the laying out in some and the planting in other cases could be improved. Plans could be carried out with more taste than is sometimes shown, and new ideas be encouraged, but on the whole there is so much that is excellent and well done that there is a great deal to be proud of.

The various open spaces in London can easily be grouped into classes. First there are the Royal Parks, with a history and management of their own; then there are all the Parks either created or kept up by the London County Council, and most of the commons and other large open spaces are in their jurisdiction also, though a few parks and recreation grounds are under the borough councils. Municipal bodies for the most part take charge of all the disused burial grounds converted into gardens, though some are maintained by the parish or the rector. Then there is another class of garden which must be included, namely, all the squares of London, as, although few are open to the public, they form no insignificant proportion of the unbuilt area.

All through London there are survivals of old gardens, which are still either quiet and concealed, or thrown open to the public. Such are the grounds of the Charterhouse, of Chelsea Hospital, or of the Foundling Hospital, and of other old-world haunts of peace. The rarest thing in London are the private gardens, yet they too go to make up the aggregate lungs of the city. Out of a total of upwards of 75,000 acres there are in round numbers some 6000 acres of parks, commons, squares, and open spaces in London: of these a little over 4000 acres are in the hands of the London County Council. Besides this it administers nearly 900 acres outside the county. The City of London owns large forest tracts, commons, and parks beyond the limit of the County of London—Epping, Burnham Beeches, Highgate Wood, and parks in West Ham, Kilburn, &c.—altogether nearly 6500 acres.

London is such a wide word, it is difficult to set a limit, and to decide what open spaces actually belong to London. As the town stretches away into the country, it is impossible to see the boundaries of London. The line must be drawn near where the chimney-pots become incessant, and the stems of the trees become black. But the degree of blackness, dirt, and density is impossible to decide; so a prosaic, matter-of-fact, but necessary rule has been adhered to in the following pages, of keeping as strictly as possible to the actual defined limits of the County of London. Therefore all the parks owned by the City Corporation or London County Council outside this limit have not been dealt with, and such places as Chiswick, Kew, Richmond, or Gunnersbury have been omitted.

To get to some of these places involves a considerable journey. Many of the outlying parks have to be reached by train, or by a very long drive, or tram ride. From Hyde Park Corner, for instance, to Bostall Wood or Avery Hill is a long expedition. To the fortunate few who possess motor cars the distances are trifling, but the vast majority of people must exercise considerable ingenuity, and possess a good bump of locality, if they wish to visit all London’s open spaces. A knowledge of the distant places, the names of which are inscribed in large letters on every omnibus, is necessary. The Royal Oak, Elephant and Castle, or Angel, are but starting-places for the more distant routes, although they form the goal of green, red, or blue ’busses. The electric trams of South London have made the approach to Dulwich, Peckham, Greenwich, and many other parks much more simple, and motor ’busses rattle along close to even the distant Golder’s Hill or Highbury Fields. With a railway time-table, a good eye for colour in selecting the right omnibus, and a knowledge of the points of the compass, every green patch in London can be reached with ease, even by those whose purses are not long enough to let them indulge in motors, or whose nerves are not steady enough to let them venture on bicycles.

Each park forms the central point of some large district, and they are not dependent on the casual visitor for appreciation. Every single green spot, on a fine Saturday throughout the year, is peopled with a crowd from the neighbourhood, and on every day in the year, winter as well as summer, almost every open space has a ceaseless throng of comers and goers.

What is the cost of maintenance of these parks is a question that will naturally occur; and the answer in many cases is easy to find, as the statistics of both the London County Council Parks, published in their handbook, and those of the Royal Parks, which are submitted to Parliament every year, are accessible. The following extracts may, however, be useful. In looking at the two sets of figures, of course the acreage must be borne in mind, and the great expense of police in the Royal Parks, amounting to £8782 for Hyde Park alone, must be deducted before any fair comparison can be made, even when results are not considered.

Taken from the Estimates for 1907–8.

Taken from L.C.C. Handbook No. 1009, 1906.

London has always been a city of gardens, and although much boast is made of the newly-acquired open spaces, a wail for those destroyed would have equal justification. It is very terrible that everything in life has to be learnt by slow and hard lessons, dearly purchased under the iron rod of experience. It is not till the want of a green spot is brought painfully home to people by its loss, that the thought of saving the last remaining speck of greenery is borne in upon them with sufficient force to transform the wish into action. For generations garden after garden has passed into building land. No one has a right to grudge the wealth or prosperity that has accrued in consequence, but the wish that the benevolence and foresight of past days had taken a different bent, and that a more systematic retention of some of the town gardens had received attention, cannot be banished.

When Roman civilisation had been swept away in Britain, and with it all vestiges of the earliest gardens, there are no vestiges of horticulture until Christianity had taken hold of the country, and religious houses were rising up in various parts of the kingdom. The cradle of modern gardening may be said to have been within the peaceful walls of these monastic foundations. In no part of the country were they more numerous than in and around London, and it is probable that every establishment had its garden for the supply of vegetables, and more particularly medicinal herbs. Attached to most of them, there was also a special garden for the production of flowers for decoration on church festivals. It is probable that the earliest London gardens were of this monastic character, and as long as the buildings were maintained the gardens were in existence. The Grey, the Black, the White, and the Austin Friars all had gardens within their enclosures; and the Hospitaller Orders—the Templars and Knights of St. John—had large gardens within their precincts. The Temple Garden is still one of the charms of London, but only the old gateway of the Priory of St. John in Clerkenwell remains, and the garden, with all its historical associations, has long since vanished. It was in a small upper room, “next the garden in the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in England, without the bars of West Smythfield,” that Henry VII., in the first year of his reign, gave the Great Seal to John Morton, Bishop of Ely, and appointed him Chancellor, and he “carried the seal with him” to his house, Ely Place, hard by.1 These small references show the picturesque side of such events, the gardens constantly being the background of the scenes.

It is only one more of the regrettable results of the barbarous way in which the Reformation was carried out in England, that the gardens shared the fate of the stately buildings round whose sheltering walls they flourished. It is not easy to picture the desolation of those days: the unkept, uncared-for garden, trodden under foot, makes the forlorn aspect of the despoiled monasteries more pathetic.

London was a city of palaces in Plantagenet times, and the great nobles had their gardens near or surrounding their castles. Bayard’s Castle, facing the river for centuries, had its gardens, and there were spacious gardens within the precincts of the Tower when it was the chief royal residence in London, and outside the walls of the City fine dwellings and large gardens were clustered together. Among the most famous in the thirteenth century was the Earl of Lincoln’s, purchased from the Dominicans, when they outgrew their demesne in Holborn, and migrated to the riverside, where their memory ever lives under their popular name of the Black Friars. Minute accounts of the expenses of this garden are preserved in the Manor Roll, and a very fairly accurate picture of what it was can be pieced together. The chief flowers in it were roses, and the choicest to be found at that date, the sweet-scented double red “rosa gallica,” would be in profusion. It might be that, in the shady corners of the garden, periwinkle trailed upon the ground, and violets perfumed the air. White Madonna lilies reared their stately heads among the clove pinks, lavender, and thyme. Peonies, columbines, hollyhocks, honeysuckle, corncockles, and iris, white, purple, and yellow, made no mean show. The orchard could boast of many kinds of pears and apples, cherries and nuts. A piece of water described as “the greater ditch”2 formed the fish stew where pike were kept and artificially fed. Besides all this, there was a considerable vineyard. It was thought a favourable spot for vines, and the Bishop of Ely’s vineyard, the site of which is still remembered by Vine Street, was hard by. A good deal of imagination is now required to conjure up a picture of a vintage in Holborn. Amid the crowd of cabs, carts, carriages, and omnibuses rolling all day over the Viaduct from Oxford Street to the heart of the City, it needs as fertile a brain as that of the poet who pictured the vision of poor Susan as she listens to the song of the bird in Wood Street to call up such a scene. The gardens sloping down to the “bourne” were carefully enclosed—the Earl of Lincoln’s by strong wooden palings, that of Ely Place by a thorn hedge with wooden gates fitted with keys and locks.3 The inner gardens, that were specially reserved for the Bishop, the great garden and the “grassyard,” were separated by railings and locked doors from the vineyard. The “grassyard” was mown, and a tithe of the proceeds from the sale of the grass paid to the Rector of St. Andrew’s, Holborn. The wine produced was more of the character of vinegar, and was also sold; as much as thirty gallons of this “verjuice” was produced in one year. Extra hands were hired to weed and dress the vineyard, and apparently the vineyard entailed a good deal of trouble, and for many years it was let. Think of a warm day in early autumn, clusters of grapes hanging from the twisted vines, men and women in gay colours carrying baskets of ripe fruit to the vats where they were trodden, and the crimson juice squeezed out; the mellow rays of the sinking sun light up the high walls and many towers of the City, and the distant pile of Westminster is half hidden by the mists rising from the river, while there, too, the vintage is in full swing, and the song4 of the grape-gatherers breaks the stillness of the October evening. Away to the north the landscape is bounded by the wooded heights of Hampstead and Highgate. Most of the country round London then was forest land, and in spite of the changes of centuries a few acres of the original forest remain in Highgate Woods to this day, now owned by the Corporation of London. Between the hills and the city on the north-east lay the marshy ground known as Moorfields, for some 800 years the favourite resort of Londoners wishing to take the air. Gradually this open space has been built over, although a few green patches, such as Finsbury Square, the Artillery Ground, or the more distant Bunhill Fields, have remained through the changes time has wrought. This space might have been like one of the other heaths or commons of London, a beautiful open space in the heart of the town, but the supposed exigencies of modern civilisation, with the usual want of foresight, have banished the life-giving fresh air, and the Corporation of London has had to go far afield, to Burnham Beeches and Epping Forest, to supply what once was at its door. Literally at its door, as the busy street of Moorgate recalls the Mayor, Thomas Falconer by name, who in 1415 “caused the wall of the citie to be broken neere unto Coleman Street, and there builded a posterne now called Moorgate, upon the Mooreside, where was never gate before. This gate he made for ease of the citizens, that way to passe upon cawseys into the Field for their recreation.”5 The fields in question were at that time a marsh, and though some fifty years later “dikes and bridges” were made, it was many years before the whole moor was drained. The task at one time seemed so difficult that the chronicler Stowe, in 1598, feared that even if the earth was raised until it was level with the city walls it would be “but little dryer,” such was the “moorish” nature of the ground. Moorfields was the scene of many curious dramas during its history. It was the great place for displays, sham fights, and sports of the citizens. Pepys notes in his Diary, July 26, 1664, that there was much discourse about “the fray yesterday in Moorfields, how the butchers at first did beat the weavers (between whom there hath been ever an old competition for mastery), but at last the weavers rallied and beat them.” Such scenes were very frequent, and Moorfields for generations was the theatre of such contests. During the time of the Great Fire, numbers of homeless people camped out there, passing days of discomfort and anxiety about their few remaining household goods. Pepys in his casual way alludes to them: “5th September, ... Into Moorefields (our feet ready to burn, walking through the town among hot coles), and find that full of people, and poor wretches carrying their goods there, and everybody keeping his goods together by themselves (and a great blessing it is to them that it is fair weather for them to keep abroad night and day); drunk there and paid twopence for a plain penny loaf.” The “trained bands” used Moorfields as their exercise ground, and no doubt the prototype of John Gilpin disported himself there. As the fields were drained after 1527 they became more and more the favourite resort of citizens of all ranks. Laid out more as a public garden in 1606, they continued the chief open space of the city until a few generations ago.

The garden of the Drapers’ Company was another of the lungs of the City, and the disappearance of the great part of it, also within recent years, is much to be regretted. This land was purchased by the Company from Henry VIII. after the garden had been made by Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, and forfeited on his attainder. His method of increasing his garden was simple enough. He appears to have taken what he wanted from the citizens adjoining, and his all-powerful position at the time left them without redress. Stowe describes the way this land was filched away. “This house being finished, and having some reasonable plot of ground left for a garden, hee caused the pales of the gardens adjoining to the north part thereof, on a sudden to be taken doune, 22 foot to be measured forth right into the north of every man’s ground, a line then to be drawn, a trench to be cast, a foundation laid, and an high bricke wall to be builded. My Father had a garden there, and there was a house standing close to his south pale; this house they loosed from the ground, and bare upon Rowlers into my Father’s garden 22 foot ere my Father heard thereof.... No man durst goe to argue the matter, but each man lost his Land.”

It is difficult to estimate whether the charitable munificence of the Company is altogether as great a public benefit, from a health point of view, as retaining some of the garden for public use would have been. Men are naturally so conservative, that, because they have been content to talk and do business, and even search for a breath of air, in the crowded streets on the hottest summer days, it has probably never occurred to them that a few minutes on a seat under shady trees would have “refreshed their spirits,” and the addition of better air improved their brain powers more effectually. The idea of a garden city is such a new one that it is not fair to judge by such standards. Distances are now much reduced by electricity above and below ground, so that the necessity of crowding business houses together to save time is not so all-important. When the City gardens became built over, no doubt the newer and more sanitary conditions were felt amply to compensate for the loss of oxygen given off by the growing plants, and the preservation of air spaces in the midst of crowded centres had not occurred to men’s minds.

London four or five hundred years ago must indeed have needed its gardens. The squalor and dirt of its cramped streets, the noisy clamour, the rough and uncouth manners, are unpleasing to realise. The contrast of the little walled gardens, where the women could sit, and the busy men find a little quiet from the noise outside, must indeed have been precious. The profession of a gardener, however, did not seem to soften their behaviour, for some of the worst offenders were gardeners. So serious did the “scurrility, clamour, and nuisance of the gardeners and their servants,” who sold their fruit and vegetables in the market, become, that they disturbed the Austin Friars at their prayers in the church hard by, and caused so much annoyance to the people living near, that in 1345 a petition, to have these “gardeners of the earls, barons, bishops, and citizens” removed to another part of the town, was presented to the Lord Mayor. Later on, gardening operations in the City and for six miles round were restricted to freemen and apprentices of the Gardeners’ Company, and the sale of vegetables was almost exclusively in their hands. Their guild had power to seize and destroy all bad plants, or those exposed for sale by unlicensed persons. The Gardeners’ Company, incorporated in 1605, had a second charter in 1616, and a confirmation of their rights in 1635, and it still remains one of the City companies.

All the smaller householders, even in the crowded parts, continued to enjoy their little gardens for many centuries. Even after the spoliation of the monasteries, the houses rebuilt on their sites had their little enclosures; and large houses such as Sir William Pawlet’s, on the ground of the Augustine monastery, or later on Sir Christopher Hatton’s on Ely Place, had their gardens around them. Even now, in the heart of London, a small row of shabby old houses survives, each with a small garden attached to it. These are called Nevill Court, from the site having been within the precincts owned by Ralph Nevill, Bishop of Chichester, Chancellor in the time of Henry III., who built a great palace near here. One of the row belongs to the Moravian Mission, or United Brothers, a sect who trace their origin to John Huss. They settled in this house in 1737. This old-world corner opens out of Fetter Lane. A small wooden paling separates the minute strips of blackened garden from a narrow paved pathway. There were many such gardens in this locality less than a century ago. Charles Lamb, when aged six, went to school to a Mr. Bird in Bond Stables, off Fetter Lane, now vanished; and, returning to the spot in 1825, he recalled the early associations: “The school-room stands where it did, looking into a discoloured, dingy garden.... Oh, how I remember ... the truant looks side-long to the garden, which seemed a mockery of our imprisonment.” Would that some antiquarian millionaire—if such a combination exists!—might take into his head to preserve Nevill Court, to restore the houses and renovate the gardens, and preserve this relic of Old London, to give future generations some idea of what the smaller dwelling-houses in the old city were like. In most districts these little gardens were the usual appendage to dwelling-houses. Pepys, living in Seething Lane, often mentions his garden. It was there he sat with his wife and taught her maid to sing; it was there he watched the flames spreading over the town at the time of the Great Fire; and in it his money was buried during the scare of the Dutch invasion. So carelessly, indeed, was the money hidden that 100 gold pieces were lost, but eventually most of them recovered by sweeping the grass and sifting the soil. The natural way in which Pepys mentions how other people—Sir W. Batten and Mrs. Turner—during the Fire buried in their city gardens their wine and other goods they could not send to the country, that is, Bethnal Green, only shows how general these little plots were.

Gerard, that delightful old herbalist and gardener to Lord Burghley, in Elizabeth’s reign, had his own garden in Holborn. In it flourished no less than some 972 varieties of plants, of which he published a catalogue in 1596. His friend and fellow-botanist, L’Obel, whose name is best remembered by the familiar genus Lobelia, testified that he had seen all the plants on the list actually growing there. The great faith and skill with which these old gardeners attempted to grow in London all the newly-acquired floral treasures, from all parts of the world, is truly touching. To make them “denizons of our London gardens” was Gerard’s delight. And this worthy ambition was shared by L’Obel, who looked after Lord Zouche’s garden in Hackney; by John Parkinson, author of the delightful work on gardening; and later on, the mantle descended to the Tradescants, who had their museum (the nucleus of the Ashmolean) or “Ark” and garden in Lambeth; by Sir Hans Sloane, who established the Physic Garden in Chelsea, and numerous others. It is curious to think how many of the plants now familiar everywhere made their first appearance in London. They were not reared elsewhere and brought to the large shows which are arranged in the metropolis to exhibit novelties to the public, but really London-grown. They were foreign importations, little seeds or bulbs, sent home to the merchants trading with the Levant, or brought back by enterprising explorers from the New World and carefully nurtured in the London gardens, that the citizens “set such store by.” There were several of these “worshipful gentlemen” to whom the introduction of flowers is due, and of many a plant Gerard could say with pride, they “are strangers to England, notwithstanding I have them in my garden.” Most plants were grown for use, but others “we have them,” says Gerard, “in our London gardens rather more for toyes of pleasure than any vertues they are possessed with.” Some of the first potatoes introduced were grown in London. Gerard had those in his garden direct from Virginia, and prized them as “a meat for pleasure.” Jerusalem artichokes were brought to London by him, and grown there in early days (1617). Parkinson also had them, calling them “Potatos of Canada.” Bananas were first seen in England in Johnson’s the herbalist’s shop in Snow Hill. At a much later date—early in last century—the fuchsia was made known for the first time to Lee, a celebrated gardener, who saw a pot of this attractive plant in the window of a house in Wapping, where a sailor had brought it as a present to his wife. So attached to it was she, that she only parted with it when a sum of eight guineas was offered, besides two of the young rooted cuttings. London can claim so many flowers, it would be tedious to enumerate them all. The first cedars in this country grew in the Chelsea Physic Garden, some of the first orchids at Loddige’s Garden in Hackney, and many things have emanated from Veitch’s Nursery, or the Botanical Gardens in Regent’s Park, or the gardens which used to belong to the Royal Horticultural Society in South Kensington. The chrysanthemum in early days flourished in Stoke Newington, and one of the very first results of cross-fertilisation, which now forms the chief part of scientific garden work, was accomplished by Fairchild, a famous nurseryman at Hoxton, who died in 1730.

This same Thomas Fairchild left a bequest for a sermon, to be preached annually on Whit Tuesday, at St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, on “the Wonderful Works of God in the Creation,” which is still delivered, often by most excellent preachers, but to a sadly small and unappreciative congregation. Every opportunity ought to be taken to awaken the interest in these wonders of creation in the vegetable kingdom, and so much might be done in London Parks. They are too frequently merely places of recreation, and until recently but little has been attempted to arouse enthusiasm for the beauties of nature, and to make them instructive as well as attractive. Even in the crowded heart of London a great deal could be effected, and it is a satisfaction to feel that attention is being drawn to the subject and an effort being made in the right direction. In the summer of 1906 a “Country in Town Exhibition” was held in Whitechapel. This novel idea was so successful, and met with such appreciation, that 33,250 people visited the exhibition during the fortnight it was open, besides the hundreds that collected to see H.R.H. Princess Christian perform the opening ceremony. The available space of the Whitechapel Art Gallery was filled with plants that would thrive in London; the Office of Works arranged a demonstration of potting; bees at work, aquaria, specimens dried by children or drawn in the schools, growing specimens of British plants, such as the dainty bee-orchis, plants and window boxes grown in the district, and such-like, made up the exhibits. Lectures were organised on plant life and nature in London which were largely attended. A series of drawings and plans of the Mile End Road and Shadwell, as they are, and as they might be, were prepared, and the cost of such transformations was worked out. These were exhibited in the hopes of awakening the interest of the Corporation who owns the site of the disused market in Shadwell, and of causing more to be done in the Mile End Road. It appears that with a comparatively small expenditure and ultimate loss, these plans could be realised, and the physical and moral conditions of the whole neighbourhood improved.

Every year it is further to get into the country from the centres of population, and the necessity of improving existing open spaces becomes all the greater. By improving it is not meant to suggest that what are sometimes called improvements should be carried out; grander band-stands, handsome railings, more asphalt paths or stiff concrete ponds. No, it is only more intelligent planting, grouping for artistic effect, and arranging to demonstrate the wonders of nature in spaces already in existence, and to suggest what could be done to cheer and brighten the dark spots of the city.

The country round London has always been a good district for wild flowers; the varied soils, aspects, and levels all go to make it a propitious spot for botanising. Many places now covered with streets were a few generations ago a mass of wild flowers. The older herbalists—Gerard, Johnson, and their friends—used to search the neighbourhood of London for floral treasures, and incidentally in their works the names of these friends, such as Mr. James Clarke and Mr. Thomas Smith, “Apothecaries of London,” and their “search for rare plants” are mentioned. Gerard was constantly on the watch, and records plants seen in the quaintest places, such as the water-radish, which he says grew “in the joints or chincks amongst mortar of a stone wall that bordereth upon the river Thames by the Savoy in London, which yee cannot finde but when the tide is much spent.” Pennyroyal “was found on the common near London called Miles ende,” “from whence poore women bring plentie to sell in London markets.” The rare adders-tongue and great wild valerian grew in damp meadows, the fields abounded with all the more common wild flowers, and such choice things as the pretty little “ladies’ tresses,” grew on the common near Stepney, while butcher’s broom, cow wheat, golden rod, butterfly orchis, lilies of the valley and royal fern, wortleberries and bilberries covered the heaths and woods of Hampstead and Highgate. Many another flower is recorded by Gerard, who must have had a keen and observant eye which could spot a rare water-plant in a ditch while attending an execution at Tyburn! yet he meekly excuses his want of knowledge of where a particular hawkweed grew, saying, “I meane, God willing, better to observe heerafter, as oportunitie shall serve me.” That power of observation is a gift to be fostered and encouraged, and were that achieved by education in Council Schools, a great success would have been scored, and probably it would be more fruitful in the child’s after life than the scattered crumbs from countless subjects with which the brain is bewildered. The wild flowers could still be enticed within the County of London, and species, which used to make their homes within its area, might be induced at least to visit some corners of its parks. The more dingy the homes of children are, the more necessary it must be to bring what is simple, pure, and elevating to their minds, and modern systems of teaching are realising this. If public gardens can be brought to lend their aid in the actual training, as well as being a playground, they will serve a twofold purpose. An old writer quaintly puts this influence of plant life. “Flowers through their beautie, varietie of colour and exquisite forme, do bring to a liberall and gentle manly mind, the remembrance of honestie, comelinesse, and all kindes of vertues. For it would be an unseemly and filthie thing, as a certain wise man saith, for him that doth looke upon and handle faire and beautifull things, and who frequenteth and is conversant in faire and beautifull places, to have his mind not faire but filthie and deformed.”

It is not possible for all London children to get into the country now that it is further away, so the more of nature, as well as true artistic gardening, they can be shown in the parks the better. It used in olden days to be the custom, among other May Day revels, to go out to the country round London and enjoy the early spring as the Arabs do at the present time, when they have the fête of “Shem-en-Nazim,” or “Smelling the Spring.” “On May day in the morning, every man, except impediment, would walk into the Sweet Meddowes and green woods, there to rejoyce their spirits with the beauty and Savour of sweet Flowers, and with the harmonie of Birdes, praising God in their kinde.”6 It would surprise many people to learn how many birds still sing their praises within the parks of London, although the meadows and other delights have vanished. This serves to encourage the optimist in believing in the future possibilities of London Parks.

There is no “park system” in England as in the United States of America, where each town provides, in addition to its regular lines of streets, and its main thoroughfares leading straight from the centre to the more suburban parts, a complete system of parks. The more old-fashioned town of Boston was behind the rest, although it contained a few charming public gardens in the heart of the town. Of late years large tracts of low-lying waste grounds have been filled up, and one piece connected with another, until it, too, rejoices in a complete “park system.” Chicago, Pittsburgh, and all these modern towns of rapid growth possess a well-ordered “park system.” The conditions, the natural aspect of the country, and the climate are so unlike our own that no comparison is fair. Like everything else in the United States, they are on a large scale, and while there is much to admire, and something to learn, there is very little in the points in which they differ from us that could be imitated. London parks and open spaces, taken as a whole, are unrivalled. The history and associations which cluster round each and all of them, would fill volumes if recorded facts were adhered to; and if the imagination were allowed to run riot within the range of possibility, there would be no limit. Things which have grown gradually as circumstances changed can have no system. Their variety and irregularity is their charm, and no description of either the parks, gardens, or open spaces of London can be given as a whole. Each has its own associations, its own history, and to glance at some of London’s bright spots and tell their stories will be the endeavour of these pages.