The Parks are, naturally, "the lungs of London." Were it not for these large "open spaces," so mercifully preserved to us by the wisdom and farsightedness of former rulers and legislators, the health of the great city would hardly now be what it is. The little town of the early centuries, Roman, Saxon, or Norman, surrounded by country woods and pastures,--dotted with the gardens of merchants and magnates, as well as with frequent convent closes, orchards, and leafy precincts,--had small need of such vast pleasure-grounds. For London, even in Elizabeth's day, consisted (as shown in Aggas's map), of only two tiny townlets, "London" and "Westminster"; beyond, all was open fields. Tottenham Court Road, that dreary thoroughfare of ugly modernity, was the solitary manor of "Toten Court," a sylvan resort for "cakes and creame": Chelsea was a pretty, distant riverside hamlet; Regent Street and Bond Street were cows' pastures, and the "flowery fields" of "Marybone" were altogether in the rural distances. Who, indeed, would recognise the present Regent's Park in these lines (from an old play called "Tottenham Court"): "What a dainty life the milkmaid leads, When o'er these flowery meads She dabbles in dew, And sings to her cow, And feels not the pain Of love or disdain...." But if, to the London of old time, the Parks were not necessary, to modern London, which has more than doubled its population and its area in the last century and a half, they are an unspeakable boon. Our forefathers were wise in their generation when they secured these stretches of the outlying country for public use. We, too, in our own day, make similar efforts, efforts of which the recent preservation of Parliament Fields, of part of Caen Wood, affords sufficient proof. In that far-off day, prophesied by "Mother Shipton," when "Primrose Hill shall be the centre of London," such breathing spaces, such oases in the wilderness of bricks and mortar, would prove of quite incalculable value. Happily, London, even in her rampant growth, is often jealously mindful of her responsibilities. Though our city boasts no such spacious boulevards as are to be seen in Paris, trees are often now planted at intervals on the sidewalks in many of the newest thoroughfares, and a few of the older streets are being widened and improved. Very few are the London views, as I have said elsewhere, that are not in a measure enlivened by foliage or greenery. The colouring of London is a thing peculiar to itself; it requires to be specially studied, even by painters whose eyes are trained to observation. Its wonderful atmospheric effects have been only more or less recently recognised by them. Very few artists have rendered thoroughly the strange cold light on the London streets; cold, yet suffused by an underlying glow, by a warmth of colour hardly at first guessed by the spectator. Even a rainy day of London greyness--what does the poet's eye see in it?