TANKARD'S CLOSE
Sta,—There is a spot in Bristol known as Tankard's Close. The university has begun to put up buildings on it ; this has raised much feeling in the neighbourhood, but, as it seems that the land, though open ground for time out of mind, cannot be proved to be common land, it looks as though nothing can be done. But Tankard's Close is unique. Behind fine seventeenth- and eighteenth-century buildings, one comes without warning on what might be far from any city and far from this age—a little drawing • of an eighteenth-century country common by Gainsborough or Constable. Such a thing in-the midst of a great city is a rare ornament ; nothing can make up a loss of this peculiar character. Beauty is lightly I and irresponsibly squandered by almost every interest (and in " pluming " no ground seems too slight for its destruction), but surely a university ought to be the last body so insensitivel7 to blot it out—Truly -yours, SILVIA SHERLOCK. '
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