[9] If it is considered desirable to limit the construction of swimming baths at first to the Serpentine, a ladies’ swimming bath might be made in the portion of it contained in Kensington Gardens. When women take to swimming, as I have no doubt they will eagerly when opportunity offers, they will, of course, have to abandon their useless and inconvenient bathing gowns and adopt the dress universally worn by their sisters on the continent, or something equally well adapted to allow free play to the limbs. When London sets the example, our provincial towns will soon follow its lead, and when once open-air swimming baths become general throughout the land, we may hope one day to cease to deserve the reproach—that though we live in a sea-surrounded and lake and river-abounding country, a much smaller proportion of its inhabitants can swim well than is to be found in many continental countries which have none of our aquatic advantages. Transcriber’s Note Apart from one instance of punctuation normalisation, the text is presented as printed in the original, including inconsistent hyphenation (ironwork/iron-work/iron work, open-air/open air, spring-board/spring board, spring-lock/spring lock), period spelling (accessaries, asphalte, gaselier, Shakspeare) and northern dialect words (wersh, caller).