In the year 1882 the Earl of Meath (then Lord Brabazon) started the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. It began on this wise. The Kyrle Society and the National Health Society had each an Open Spaces sub-committee, Miss Octavia Hill, of the Kyrle Society, having always been a prominent supporter of the movement for promoting open spaces, “outdoor sitting-rooms” she called them, in poor districts. But the funds of these committees were very small, and the work they could accomplish, except in the matter of influencing public opinion, very limited. They made grants of seats to a few churchyards which were being laid out, and joined in deputations to public bodies respecting open spaces, &c. Lord and Lady Brabazon had laid out the churchyards of St. John, Hoxton, and St. Mary, Haggerston, and had taken much interest in the formation of other grounds, such as the Brewers’ Garden at Stepney, which mainly owed its existence to the Rev. Sydney Vatcher, present vicar of St. Philip’s; and Lord Brabazon felt that there was room and need for a separate association for preserving, acquiring, and laying out open spaces, and for promoting similar objects. He therefore invited representatives of the Kyrle and National Health Societies, and others interested in the matter, to meet him and to discuss the advisability of sinking their own committees in a new and separate body, or rather of amalgamating their efforts in the same direction. The National Health Society only too gladly acquiesced, and from that time forward passed on all work connected with open spaces to the new body, Mr. Ernest Hart, Chairman of their Council, becoming the first vice-chairman of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. There are now eighteen. But Miss Octavia Hill held back. And this is the reason why there is still an Open Spaces branch of the Kyrle Society, and why on the title-page of the annual reports of the Gardens Association the words “In connection with the National Health Society,” are always inserted. The following graveyards have been laid out as gardens by the Kyrle Society in London—St. Peter’s, Bethnal Green, E., St. George’s, Bloomsbury, W. C. (the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association giving £100 towards the laying out of each of these), St. George the Martyr, Bloomsbury, W.C., and the burial-ground of St. Nicholas’, Deptford, in Wellington Street, S.E.—four very useful grounds. [Illustration: CHURCHYARD OF ST. BOTOLPH, ALDGATE.]