point of view. In London there is no official department which does this. Whether it rest with the Office of Works, the London County Council, or the City Corporation, a street and building improvement appears, as far as one can judge, to be considered only in regard to two points-economy of cost, and convenience of street traffic; important considerations, no doubt, but surely not comprising all that should be thought of in the treatment of a capital city. It is owing to this eternal cry for economy that much of what we do in London public architecture is so small in scale, so deficient in grandeur. A parish church in Paris takes the dimensions which in England would be thought adequate for a secondclass cathedral. Look, again, at the majestic mass of the Arc de Él'toile, decorated (on one face at least) with one of the most powerful productions of modern sculpture, and reflect that we have nothing of the same kind to put alongside it but the paltry Marble Arch. But in England anything on the scale of the Arc de l'Etoile would be dubbed a waste of public money. Many fine opportunities have already been lost in London; let us at least endeavour to make the most of those that are left to us, and to realise, and get the public to realise, that an economy which stereotypes an architectural mistake and nullifies an opportunity for adding to the beauty and impressiveness of London, is a purely mischievous form of the intermittent zeal of public bodies for the reduction of expenditure.

It is apparently in the hope of developing and putting in movement an enlightened public opinion on this subject that 'The London Society,' whose First Annual Report is before us, has been formed. The objects of the Society are set forth in the Note prefixed to the Report, some sentences from which may be quoted :

'London is the greatest city in the world, yet it is behind all the great continental and American cities in the consideration which has been given both to its present appearance and to its future growth.

The aim of the London Society is to build up a strong public opinion and to provide a means by which Londoners can bring their influence to bear upon matters of artistic, antiquarian, and practical interest, so that by concerted action they may achieve something definite, and for the lasting good of this great City.

'The methods of the London Society will consist in supporting by

means a is lower nich proposals as are good, and in bringing Jome n ni mers set, re it is too ate the full meaning of those * porus vină ure sad or il considered so that pressure may be bronchi na wear in use responsible ether to amend or abandon Te Socery v mlect and provide such information as ▼ll made its members to insist on the regard being given to the amine as well as to the practical consideration.... Since the

London when À en ́s great plan for the remodelling of the vis wand.net untless ither opportunities have been thrown they failed because public opinion was not sufficiently

string to sure her adcoton.

It is teneret that public pinion is now much more correctly Instricted and kert but it is only by combination that definite resulta can be achieved. The London Society will provide the macliners for sombination if Londoners will supply the means for its organisation and support.

The list of names of fistingushed artists-painters, sculptors, and architects—who are included in the Council of the Society ought to be a sufficient guarantee of its competency to advise on questions in which the artistic improvement of London is concerned. We have no Ministry of Fine Arts, no official department whose mandate is to deal with public improvements from an architectural point of view. The London Society desires to supply this deficiency; to give the best advice on such points when invited to do so; to use its influence, even when not invited, to prevent the carrying out of schemes in themselves faulty and undesirable; to prevent the expenditure of money on costly mistakes which cannot afterwards be undone; and above all, to think out important projects for London improvement, and endeavour to promote their execution. The power of the London Society to act this part with effect must of course largely depend on the support which it may receive, and which it is earnestly to be hoped it will receive, from public opinion and public subscription.

In regard to a criticism which we know has been made, that a Society with these aims is proposing what is an intrusion on the province of the bodies who are formally and officially concerned with the treatment of London, the answer is, in the first place, that these bodies have shown experimentally either that they do not understand the subject of architectural improvement, or that they are indifferent to it. It is to the City Corporation that we owe the incubus of the Tower Bridge; the County Council would have imposed something

almost as bad on us at Vauxhall, but for public criticism; and as to the Office of Works, the record of its principal improvements' amounts almost to a catalogue of architectural blunders. But the more important reply is that neither the State nor Municipal departments, so far as they deal with public architecture, have any right to consider that London architecture is their property pro tem. to do what they like with. They are not owners of London: they are trustees, with a duty both to the present and to future generations. The architectural improvement of London is the concern of every intelligent and educated Londoner, and the departments which actuate the official machinery for dealing with it are responsible to the educated public, who may now be said to be adequately represented by the London Society. But both in State and Municipal departments a policy of secrecy is kept up in regard to all projected improvements; the desire seems to be to prevent the public knowing anything about what is proposed until it is too late to interfere; the object, with the municipal bodies, being apparently not to discover and to do what is best, but simply to have their own way, in a dull and obstinate defiance of all outside opinion. In the matter of London bridges this is especially the case. For many years past, every time a new bridge is intended, the fact has been kept a secret as long as possible; even when the intention has leaked out, no one is allowed to see any design; and then, when it is publicly suggested that we ought to have an opportunity of seeing and expressing an opinion on it, comes the stereotyped answer that 'the design ' of our engineer is already made and cannot be altered'; and any claim that the design ought to be subjected to architectural revision is scouted as involving an insult to our engineer, from which he must be protected.' Those words were actually used in the London County Council, in reference to the affair of Vauxhall Bridge. Is it not a monstrous thing that a bridge which may last for centuries is to be imposed upon us, in spite of perhaps unredeemed ugliness, because it satisfies the taste of the official engineer, whose whole education has dealt only with structure, and who has probably never in his life given a thought to the aesthetics of design?

At the present moment there are several new problems

in London improvement which call for special notice. One is that connected with the proposed new Post Office site. There is here an opportunity for a great improvement scheme which, unless a vigorous effort is made to support it, seems likely to be thrown away. It is proposed to erect a new Post Office building on the site, or nearly on the site, of the old building which has just been pulled down. The present state of the site is shown in Fig. 1, omitting unnecessary details. It is understood (for here of course the policy of secrecy is maintained) that the intention is to project the new building considerably southwards towards the line of Cheapside, removing the buildings which form a small island there at present. The bad effects of this procedure would be threefold. In the first place, the new building would have no symmetrical architectural relation with the existing Post Office facing on Newgate Street and St. Martin's-le-Grand. If the two buildings are to form one great Post Office group, it is a mere matter of architectural common sense that the southern boundary of the new building should be in line with the southern (Newgate Street) boundary of the existing building, so that the two should form a connected architectural group, as indicated in Fig. 2. Secondly, the result of extending the new building southward would be that the vista along Newgate Street would lead up to nothing but the projecting angle of a building. An important street should lead up to some definite architectural feature, not to an angle of a building the rest of which vanishes out of sight. Thirdly, it will be necessary before long, especially if the proposed St. Paul's Bridge brings a fresh stream of northward traffic up to the junction of Newgate Street and Cheapside, to form a new main north-easterly street from this point to Liverpool Street Station. If, instead of leaving an open space here, the new Post Office is allowed to cover a portion of it, we shall then be told that there is no outlet for the north-easterly street except by pulling down St. Vedast Church and going over the site of it, and we shall lose another of Wren's churches merely in consequence of a mismanagement of the site and an inability to foresee its consequences. Keep the southern boundary of the new Post Office in line with that of the Newgate Street façade, and there will then be left an open space for the distribution of traffic and for the opening into the new north-easterly

in the centre of the open space a fountain or monument could

be erected, as shown in Fig. 2, so as to be seen as a central object along the axial line of three different streets-Newgate Street, the new north-easterly street, and the widened street

FIG. 2.-The Post Office site as it ought to be treated.

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street, which would start to the northward of St. Vedast, a small garden being formed in the angle by the church. And