The Dawn of Better Days in City Architecture Mr. Paul Waterhouse, President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, in a paper read to the members on "Some London and other Problems,' spoke of the growing movement towards beautifying the City on the river si The decision given by the Institute against the promotion of higher buildings in London, he said, was a high-minded example of truth to artistic purpose, Some while ago, there was a debate as to what should be the motto of the London County Council armorial bearings. His own suggestion was "Keep off the Grass." In suggesting it, he meant no reflexion on the County Council itself, but rather on a spirit which seemed to threaten all those who found themselves in charge. It was a spirit which, happily, was on the wane, and he believed the County Council itself was contributory to its gradual extinction. He hardly knew haw to define it, except by example and analogy. The simplest example was Paris. Paris, like London, had a river—a wilder, larger, less tameable river. But in spice of embankments in solid masonry, higher' and even more solid than our own, big trees of forest growth grew between the embankment and the river's edge-'Chose who had seen those trees and the shore knew also that men went fishing on the river bank, and that the parapets of the embankment were lost—he might say decorated by a mile of bookstalls, The fact was, he supposed, that we had a kind of Protestantism or Puritanism in our ideas of town propriety, and we certainly cherished a sense that there was a normal kind of rigour which suited a town, out of which country must be excluded. That was why our suburbs were largely hideous, Paris was a very large country town; London, however much its size were reduced, could never be a country town. It did not differ in degree, but in kind.
Richmond Park, barring a certain superfluity of railings, might be looked on as being almost a miracle. That anything so like untouched Nature should exist se near London was almost scandalously delightful. Imagine, he said, another night-time transformation; conceive Richmond Park taking the place of Hyde Park. What would happen in the morning? He thought it would be at once closed for necessary alterations. Versailles was the same distance from Paris that Hounslow was from London. "Drive from Versailles to the capital through St. Cloud (exclaimed the lecturer) and you will not dare to tell me that the miles of unfenced woodland through which you pass would be permitted on the Hounslow Road. There is undergrowth in the Bois de Boulogue. If it were to spring up in Regent's Park, what would hap-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.