Now, when these historic dust-heaps were carted off to Russia—the story is a true one—and utilized in rebuilding the walls of Moscow, they left a void which even the London builder could not immediately fill. In the twenties there was still a large vacant space near the corner of Gray’s Inn Lane, bounded by (the present) Liverpool, Manchester, and Argyle Streets, and reaching nearly to the Euston Road. This space became the property of a company which, in 1829, invited the public by prospectus to subscribe about £20,000 for its development. {54} The worthy historian of Clerkenwell describes this company as the ‘Pandemomium’ (_sic_), but as a matter of fact it called itself the Panarmonion, and had nothing demoniac in its objects, but rather the laudable purpose of converting a dusty wilderness into a garden and temple of the Muses. The promoter was a certain Signor Gesualdo Lanza, who presided over a school for acting and singing in the neighbourhood. Lanza proposed to establish—and displayed in lithographic plans—a great ‘Panarmonion Institution,’ consisting of a theatre, a concert-hall, a ‘refectory,’ a reading-room, and even an hotel. These buildings were to rise in a pleasaunce encircled by trees and alcoves, and adorned with a great fountain and cascade. [Picture: Suspension Railway, Panarmonion Gardens. From an engraving, circa 1830] In March, 1830, the place was opened, but the dreams of the prospectus were never realized. A shilling was charged for admission to the gardens, but it does not appear that they were ever properly laid out, and the only attraction was a tour of the grounds in a peculiar ‘Suspension Railway,’ the invention of Mr. H. Thorrington. This railway consisted of a boat-shaped car suspended from a substantial level bar, along which it travelled on small wheels set in motion by a wheel in the car worked by hand. {55a} For the more adventurous visitors, hobby-horses (rudimentary ‘cycles’) were likewise suspended from the bar, and worked in the same way as the boat. The theatre, of which a noble elevation by ‘Stephen Geary, architect,’ {55b} had been shown in the prospectus, turned out to be a small and narrow building, originally erected for an auction-room, which Lanza opened in March, 1830, with an amateurish performance of the opera of _Artaxerxes_. The enterprise was a failure from the first; the lease of the theatre was offered for sale in August, {56} and we hear no more of the gardens.