LONDON IMPROVEMENTS.
THE view of London in 1860, which we glanced at last week, was not absolutely a fancy picture ; yet in the reality it may be liable to serious modifications. We have already begun some of the most material improvements, but we have done very little towards the tout ensemble, and there is no denying that 1860 will depend a great deal upon 1854. It is a dogma with us not to do things, however much we may like them, on a theoretical or a priori prin- ciple but to let them grow." such is our principle. If Jean PaufRichter cautions us against " fearing fear," so the English- man's wildest mania is a theory against the value of theory. On theory, then, we let things grow spontaneously, as the wisest plan —society, commerce, manufacture, streets ; and as in that neglected manner their growth is very often much deformed in practice, we are very apt to complete our prospective theory of spontaneous growth with a retrospective penitence for not having taken care in time. It is by that kind of spontaneous growth that we have permitted some of our drains to grow in such wise that a lower one was to run into an upper one ; and really there is some chance that the picture of London in 1860 may be deformed by that kind of disordered growth.
We may have all the improvements, one by one ; but the question is, bow they may be arranged. It is in conformity with that love of the practical rather than the theoretical, that some in- genious person who admires the decimal system of coinage insists upon making the penny one of the denominations as well as the pound : that is the true idea of a practical man, who insists upon making a third in a series of decimal coins the 240th part of the first ; and we might have apractical arrangement of London im- provements on that plan. We then might have Battersea Park without a bridge to it ; grand drains opening, not into each other, but into the subterranean railway ; three or four different kinds of Thames embankment, having no communication with each other ; and half-a-dozen new buildings on one spot, each hiding all the rest. We permit the parts to grow spontaneously without refer- ence to the whole, and wonder at the end that they do not fit. That this is no fanciful complaint, any passenger in London may verify for himself by what has happened in St. Paul's Church- yard. Sir Christopher Wren contemplated a magnificent opening from the cathedral to the river, facing the South transept ; which is partly designed with that view. The building is still the finest in th'e metropolis ; and since Sir Christopher Wren died, there have been men with sufficient sense to wish that the ground around the Metropolitan Cathedral might be cleared in order to a better view of the structure. A new street was opened in the direction of Watling Street, which offered a chance of displaying the ca- thedral in one quarter; but spontaneous growth has interfered, and has raised an enormous Manchester warehouse, which juts out just sufficiently to break the view of the cathedral from the new street, to dwarf it in the immediate neighbourhood, and to stand in the way of any future opening from the South transept to the Thames. The building in itself is not bad: it is not what Wren or Inigo Jones would have designed, but it is infinitely better than the boxes of which our streets mostly consist; and had it been placed in the Borough or on the river bank, or any other low ground, with plenty of room to spare, it might have been advan- tageously substituted for some of the rubbish which now enema., hers those places. But of all spots in London, the one which ought to have been last selected was that where it serves as a huge wall to hide the principal building of the metropolis from the tantalized spectator. That is only a specimen of our spon- taneous growth. We erect marble arches that lead to nothing, and build great screens to intercept the sight of our best build- ings; and then call them the monuments of self-government ! The banks of the Thames are now the opportunity for a magni- ficent work or for a disastrous failure. The opportunity is evi- dent, except to the wharfingers, who protest that, on either side, the banks of the Thames, which to the stranger look like the ruinous back-yard of some marine store-dealer, are more beautiful than the broad walk and architectural street through which the
Arno runs in Florence or Pisa. To the wharfinger's eye, the Temple Gardens, an oasis in that desert, are a waste of space. All
the plans for the improvement of the Thames contemplate arrange- ments which would save private interests; even the wharfinger would be spared all except his obvious ugliness. Mr. Allom's plan has been before the public for half a lifetime; Mr. John Martin and Sir Frederick Trench have also evinced the master- mind that can embrace the Thames of the future. The idea has grown with the age, and now there is more than one scheme for combining some of the newest improvements with the adornment of the Thames.
One is submitted to the Government, for an embankment from Battersea, on both sides of the river, into the very midst of Lon-
don, and on the North side down to London Bridge : the plan would include an embankment-wall and railway, and an espla- nade; the whole ground, or great part of it, to be recovered from the Thames, with a consequent deepening of the channel ; and the whole work, if needed, to be self-supporting, by the railway traffic and rents accruing from the improvements. A still larger scheme, and one in every respect more magnifi- cent, has been suggested to us by an eminent merchant in the City, not given to fanciful speculations, but accustomed to scan such matters with a practical eye. This plan would carry a grand. carriage-way and foot-way along the side of the river from Lon- don Bridge to Richmond, with a railway underneath ; the whole supported on pillars, which would still leave to the wharfingers and others their right of way to the river unimpeded. Our friend's idea is a structure of cast-iron, somewhat on the principle of the railway bridge at Newcastle, which under the railway has a road for carriages and a footpath; only the positions of the railway and
the common road would here be reversed. It is confidently believed that this scheme would be entirely self-supporting by the traffic of the railway, at very moderate rates. It would not only be a noble work in itself, but, by opening an extensive new thoroughfare, would greatly relieve our overcrowded streets.
Of one thing we are certain, that this last plan which we have named, or the plan on which the Minister of Public Works is pon- dering, or Mr. Allom's design, or Sir Frederick Trench's dream, or Mr. Martin's picture, would either one of them be infinitely pre- ferable to what now exists. We are still more certain, that if it were left to the " spontaneous growth," the bit by bit reform, under the conflicting inspiration of an Allom here, a Martin there, a Molesworth at one point, a Trench at another, the embankment of the Thames would be a failure ; and the system, instead of being self-supporting, would tumble into the river. But we are pro- mised by Lord Palmerston something like a Municipality; we are
promised in Sir William Molesworth something like an efficient Minister of Public Works; and the only thing wanted hopefully to complete the instruments for the grand reform appears to be a great architect. In the design of one of our newest public build- ings on the left bank of the river, we have had " a bit of a great architect"; but we want the metropolis to be brought to a consist- ent whole ; and whether we can make any progress towards that by 1860, will much depend upon what we do, or abstain from doing, in 1854.
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