nita eastward of Leadenhall; the very class of the population, too, which is the most helpless in its own behalf, and which most of all requires the extension of those blessings which for themselves they have neither the address, skill, or energy to obtain. It would be found, we do not in the least doubt, that the mortality of the metropolis is exactly in the inverse ratio of proximity and access to public parks and open spaces; and this, for all we know to the contrary, may have already been demonstrated by Mr Farr, or some other equally high authority in vital statistics.
Whether or not, however, the necessity of public walks—when we say public, we mean public, not gentility- mongering places, but spaces thrown open freely and altogether to the lowest class of our labouring and manufacturing population, who need all the rational recreation we can afford them—is but too apparent. Genteel people are abundantly provided for already: they can afford to go down the Thames and up the Thames—to the suburbs, the parks, the country. Money, and their legs, will carry them whither they will; but with the poor artisan or labouring man it is not so. He cannot afford time or means to set out with his wife and children on a Sunday voyage of discovery—and to find the shades of night, perhaps, falling around him just as he has succeeded in refreshing his eyes with a bit of any thing green.
Does any body suppose that the love of nature is not an instinct with the imprisoned poor of our great cities, and of our great city of cities in particular? Go through a crowded neighbourhood, crammed from the cellar to the attic with the children of toil, and look up at their windows; see the attempt the poor people make to cherish the belief in a world of verdure and freshness—of trees, and hills, and vales, and flowers, and birds—the little green box of cherished mignionette, the broken tea-pot with a bunch of primrose or of cowslip in it, the geranium in an old cracked jug; and the poor artisan himself, debarred as he is
—"The common air, and common use
Of his own limbs,"
nurturing, with almost paternal affection, his two or three little shrubs or flowers—who will have the impudence to deny the capacity of this man for enjoying that of which his condition in life almost precludes the possibility of enjoyment?
Let us hope that the Commissioners of Metropolitan Improvements will bestir themselves, and that in the east end of London—in Southwark and in Lambeth—something may be done in behalf of the creditable, industrious, and well-conducted manufacturing and labouring population of the vast metropolis of this vast empire.
