sake of some minute economy. North of the river the Commercial Road, the City and New Roads, the New North Road, the Seven Sisters', Camden, Caledonian, and Finchley Roads, and Highgate Archway; and on the Southwark side, the Kent and Dover Roads, and all the avenues that radiate from the Surrey Obelisk, are like ’imperial works, and worthy kings.' But since the Government has lost its healthy despotism scarcely a mile of thoroughly suburban road, apart from public parks and promenades, has been laid out as a main public thoroughfare. Streets at the rate of fifty miles a year have been constructed, not as thoroughfares however, but as ’frontages,' and with regard alone to each small plot of land which is described as an 'estate.' There is no thought about the gradients and continuity of roads and streets, or of an avenue or great highway. The only things considered are the rentals and the Building Acts. Suburban London is a tangle of small streets that lead to nothing but the score or two of houses in each line of frontage; and in many places for a mile each way no leading and continuous thoroughfare occurs. The Board of Works, a delegation from the parish vestries, is engaged in rectifying crooked corners and extending narrow lanes in central, close-built London; but, while all this little work is going on, the great suburban districts, owing to the habitual neglect and want of circumspection of the Board, are constantly supplying them with further opportunity for opening needful avenues, through finished neighbourhoods, in the most expensive way. Instead of carefully anticipating the advance of building work round London, and providing broad and leading thoroughfares in all directions, everything is left to chance, or to the smallest and most selfish interests; and the Board, with all its peddling and expensive works, is falling year by year more distantly behind the public need. They even fail to guard the public rights which Parliament a century ago had granted. Thus, the Acts for the formation of the road from Paddington
