HOW TO PUNISH SIR BENJAMIN.
Sin BENJAMIN HALL, it seems, did intend to send a carriage-road through the ornamental waters of St. James's Park ; and he avows that he framed that unconstitutional design against the public under instructions from a higher quarter ! Somebody had told him to perforate one of the "lungs of London," and he assented! How many reasons might have deterred him !-the witticism about the "three crowns " ; the example of the old lumbering bridge, which was not the proposed carnage-road, yet was kicked away; the credit earned by his predecessors for improving and giving us parks, not for cutting them up ! The culprit has confessed that he was not, like those improvers, the right man in the right place ; haw shall we punish him for not being a better man ? He will bring in his bill-his instructions and his credit oblige him now to make the appeal to which he is pledged-to lay the question before the Commons. It will have a clause or clauses authorizing the road. Some tribune of the People-Tom Dun- combe, for example-will propose to strike out those clauses, and to insert others. Sir Benjamin will be allowed to make his road round the Park, or under the Park, or anywhere but through the Park. And really the important line from the North-east to the South-west, from the Strand or St. Pancras to South Pimlico, could be much improved by improving the immediate margin of the Park, and preventing obstructive narrowness or barriers about George Street and Queen Square. But other clauses will be introduced into the bill, empowering Benjamin, Pontifex Maximus, to improve the Park he would have mauled, and to add to it. This could easily be done. A very pretty and light bridge, or a charming tunnel, could open a communication direct between the St. James's and the Green Park, as between the two halves of the Zoological Gardens ; greatly extending the stroll, without the necessity for turning into the public ways. The Green Park is now simply a waste ground,- cleaned, no doubt, but bare of ornament, or of those shrubberies which, without obstructing ventilation, add so much to the apparent space, and build up so pleasant a picture.
i
The ground slopes considerably, and s a perfect theatno stage for the landscape-gardener. There are resources, too, beyond, which would add to it the jewellery of gardening,-a running stream, meandering down, with here and there, to glad. both ear and eye, a little waterfall.
The clauses will stipulate that henceforward the Green Park shall be called Benjamin's Recompense.
Previous page
