THE BASINGSTOKE CANAL.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—One feels the strongest sympathy with the point of view expressed so well in your current issue against the filling-in of the Basingstoke Canal. There are many similar stretches of derelict canals throughout the country equally picturesque and capable in some cases probably of being made artistically and profitably useful in such ways as suggested in that of the Basingstoke Canal. But "picturesqueness-plus-five-per cent.," like "philanthropy-plus-five-per cent.," unfortunately can have but very limited application. It must reasonably be antici- pated that unless something is evolved to bring about the possibility of applying the redeeming 5 per cent. in a wider field than that of the picturesque and the artistically useful, the great majority of such canals as those referred to will either be actively filled in for some utilitarian purpose or become choked up and filled in by the natural effects of time. But there is something of a whiff at least of "Gilead balm," in the Report of the recent Royal Commission upon the Canals and Inland Navigation of the United Kingdom. After a long, careful, and detailed inquiry, its recommendations go to prove that there is useful and profitable commercial scope for the canal as well as the railway. Further, an influential meet- ing of representatives of manufacturing and trade interests in the Midlands, Chambers of Commerce, County Councils, and Dock Authorities, presided over by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, was held three weeks or so ago at Worcester to take the first steps to bring the recommendations of the Royal Commission within the scope of practical politics. The lovers of the Basingstoke Canal, in common with those of other canals, may thus yet have retained for them the incidental, and other than strictly business, features they find attractive in canal waters and their immediate surroundings. Alongside even the enlarged and improved business canals proposed there will be plenty of water-loving trees, plants, and flowers ; ample reedy margins for coots, buntings, and snipe ; and in their waters sufficient store of roach, perch, carp, and pike to cheer up the gentle and pathetic-looking angler. In addition, to fill in the picture, they will also have what they have now long missed, the moving barge. It is true that the canal horse, with that knowingly sedate air so characteristic of the tra- versers of one path in life, will be absent, for the future barge will be driven by oil, gas, or electricity. But then we cannot expect to have everything, even on a Spectator canal.—I am,
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