Without
Are Close And Crowded Streets, Swarming With Foot-Passengers, And Choked
With Drays And Carriages.
These parks have been called the lungs of London, and so important are
they regarded to the public health
And the happiness of the people, that I
believe a proposal to dispense with some part of their extent, and cover
it with streets and houses, would be regarded in much the same manner as a
proposal to hang every tenth man in London. They will probably remain
public grounds as long as London has an existence.
The population of your city, increasing with such prodigious rapidity;
your sultry summers, and the corrupt atmosphere generated in hot and
crowded streets, make it a cause of regret that in laying out New York, no
preparation was made, while it was yet practicable, for a range of parks
and public gardens along the central part of the island or elsewhere, to
remain perpetually for the refreshment and recreation of the citizens
during the torrid heats of the warm season. There are yet unoccupied lands
on the island which might, I suppose, be procured for the purpose, and
which, on account of their rocky and uneven surface, might be laid out
into surpassingly beautiful pleasure-grounds; but while we are discussing
the subject the advancing population of the city is sweeping over them and
covering them from our reach.
If we go out of the parks into the streets we find the causes of a corrupt
atmosphere much more carefully removed than with us. The streets of London
are always clean. Every day, early in the morning, they are swept; and
some of them, I believe, at other hours also, by a machine drawn by one of
the powerful dray-horses of this country. Whenever an unusually large and
fine horse of this breed is produced in the country, he is sent to the
London market, and remarkable animals they are, of a height and stature
almost elephantine, large-limbed, slow-paced, shaggy-footed, sweeping the
ground with their fetlocks, each huge foot armed with a shoe weighing from
five to six pounds. One of these strong creatures is harnessed to a
street-cleaning machine, which consists of brushes turning over a cylinder
and sweeping the dust of the streets into a kind of box. Whether it be wet
or dry dust, or mud, the work is thoroughly performed; it is all drawn
into the receptacle provided for it, and the huge horse stalks backward
and forward along the street until it is almost as clean as a
drawing-room.
I called the other day on a friend, an American, who told me that he had
that morning spoken with his landlady about her carelessness in leaving
the shutters of her lower rooms unclosed during the night. She answered
that she never took the trouble to close them, that so secure was the city
from ordinary burglaries, under the arrangements of the new police, that
it was not worth the trouble.
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