The new Parks which are now forming around the metropolis do great credit to Government, and will, like charity, cover a multitude of minor transgressions; for those who legislate for the benefit of posterity must be influenced by something more noble than narrow and selfish views. Breathing-room has been sadly neglected of late around the metropolis. Let any one cross over London Bridge, and turn up by St. George's Church in the Borough, along the Old Kent Road, and as far as New Cross, he will find it one continuous and unbroken chain of buildings. Yet here is space ample enough, and grounds of but little value, that might be formed into a spacious park. If this is not done, those who twenty years hence live in this neighbourhood of railways will be compelled to wander as far as Blackheath or Greenwich Park, to obtain a mouthful of pure air. Kennington Common is but a name for a small grassless square, surrounded with houses, and poisoned by the stench of vitriol-works, and black, open, sluggish ditches; what it will be when the promised alterations are completed we have yet to see. Walworth Common has vanished; and the little fairy Green before the Swan at Stockwell is now no more; while even Clapham Common seems in our eyes to lessen every year. Wandsworth had set out in good earnest to reach Lambeth, and would soon have been near the Nine Elms station, had not Government stopped its career, by stepping in between at Battersea Fields. Cross the water, and some of the miscalled Parks are like the one named Whetstone--thrust into the corner of a square. Barnsbury Park is in any street which the conductor of the Islington omnibus may please to set you down at; while Islington, Highbury, Pentonville, and King's Cross are all so jostled together, that you cannot tell which is the beginning or the end of either the one or the other. We have heard of a neighbourhood that stretches somewhere behind Houndsditch and Bishopsgate, and seen something of it while gazing from the dome of St. Paul's; but from the view thus obtained of it, we should as soon hope to find our way out of the Cretan labyrinth, if once in it, as to extricate ourselves from this maze of streets and alleys. We can imagine some stranger losing his way in this perplexing maze, and ever moving on until he grew grey, without a hope of finding his way out again. The new Park in progress near this neighbourhood may, at last, be something like a landmark by which we can see through such an unknown wilderness. How the inhabitants of such localities as these must pine for "The populous solitude of bees and birds, And fairy-form'd and many-colour'd things, Who worship Him with notes more sweet than words, And innocently open their glad wings, Fearless and full of life; the gush of springs, And fall of lofty fountains; and the bend Of stirring branches, and the bud that brings The swiftest thought of beauty."--_Byron._ CHAPTER XV. ST. GILES's.