The Sun.
London, England, 1860-08-01 00:00:00

andscape gardening. However this may be,
the greater evil has been evaded : and remember-
ing how much Mr. COWPER had to do with its
abandonment, we were amongst the very first to
exult at his accession to that responsible post of the
Edileship, which had been so admirably occupied
by Lord LLANOVEIt prior to the right hon. baro-
net's elevation to the peerage—of which recom-
pense, by the way, his numerous friends and ad.
mirers had been so long in expectancy. While we
cannot but remember, however, that Sir BENJAMIN
HALL received, as a fitting reward for his memo-
rable and resplendent services as Chief Commis-
sioner that tardy advancement at last from a Welsh
baronetcy to a Welsh barony—we are constrained
to acknowledge how egregiously in error have been
all those who were precipitately disposed to behold
in Mr. COWPER a worthy successor of Sir BEN-
JAMIN. As if to signalise the absurdity
of any such agreeable expectations, the pre-
sent Chief Commissioner has falsified them
at once in the very scene whence (by his inaugu-
ral act) they may be said to have originated.
Kensington Gardens has undoubtedly been saved
by Mr. COWPER from pollution through the filtra-
tion scheme devised by Mr. HAWKSLEY for the
purification of the Serpentine. But hardly has
this judicious proceeding been adventured upon,
when all our pleasant hopes as to the Chief Com-
missioner's administrative powers are dashed to the
ground by an act as insensate and as ill-advised as
ever a Conservator of our Parks and Palaces deter-
mined upon performing. Suddenly—in obedience
to the merest freak of fancy—unasked by any one
—assuming to himself the sole responsibility--Mr.
COWPER bisects the most beautiful and sylvan
part of Kensington Gardens with the bold broad
sweep of a Horse Ride, carried round from the
western extremity of Rotten Row, right across
the Botanical Walk, and thence under the trees
parallel with the Broad Avenue, between
the Round Pond and the Old Kensington Palace,
the last-mentioned edifice historically memorable
as the birth-place of the reigning SOVEREIGN.
Recollect, nobody asked Mr. COWPER to do any-
thing of the kind. Recollect, too, that Kensington
Gardens—particularly at the very part cut in twain
by this Horse Ride—is, as we termed it emphati-
cally the other day, the Nursery of the Metropolis.
It is right through the centre of the swarming
crowd of children and nursery-maids and perambu-
lators that this outrageous sweep of the Horse Ride
has been carried. The road marked out for the
equestrians being defined upon either side by a line
of iron hurdles—with little gaps here and there, at
stated intervals, for the crossing to and fro, between
the horses' feet, of the throng of pedestrians, the
latter, for the most part, consisting of young
women and children. Nothing upon the very
face of it could be more ill-considered in every
imaginable way than this innovation. The site
chosen for the new Horse Ride is, for the obvious
reasons here particularised, the very worst that
could possibly have been selected. It is as if all
the park riders, male and female, had been care-
fully lured into the thick of the throng of the West-
end nursery maids and children. Yet—uncalled
for though, the improvement (!) is in itself—the
first those most interested in it learn about it is
the fact of its accomplishment. As BYRON went
to bed one night unknown and awoke the next
morning to find himself famous—Mr. COWPER re-
tired to rest the other evening in respectable ad-
ministrative mediocrity to rise the following day
haying rendered himself utterly ridiculous. What
renders the proceeding all the more outrageous in
its way is the circumstance that the Horse Ride we
are now writing about followed, as a sort of nonsensi-
cal anti-climax hard upon the heels of that magnifi-
cent demonstration of loyalty and patriotism in
Hyde-park, the review by Queen VICTORIA of thirty
thousand Rifle Volunteers. The iron hurdles used
in keeping off the pressure of the multitude of
spectators present upon the day of that magnificent
demonstration were immediately afterwards, in
obedience to the orders emanating from Mr.
COWPER'S frivolous little whimsy, carried off from
Hyde Park to Kensington Gardens, there, in the
latter beautifully wooded playground of the Lon-
don children, to be trailed in a double parallel line
across the green sward under the trees from Ken-
sington to Bayswater. No sooner was the act of
vandalism known than there was one unanimous,
vociferous outcry of indignation. Kensington,
Notting-hill, Bayswater, Marylebone, Knights
bridge, all the contiguous and surrounding locali-
ties, held meetings to protest against this
Horse Ride, signed petitions urgently de•
manding its removal, waited in deputations of
remonstrance upon the Chief Commissioner—laid
direct entreaties for the Royal interposition before
the Sovereign. The whole' neighbourhood border-
ing upon Kensington Gardens—north, south, and
west—have proved, in fact, to have been cut up as
roughly by the Horse Ride as the green turf itself
which that Horse Ride traversed !

About the happy result of this popular outcry
against the Horse Ride there cannot fortunately
be any doubt whatever left remaining. Mr.
COWPER'S hurdles will have to be carted away as
ignominiously as Mr. HAWKSLEY'S pumps and
engines, and gravel and rubbish heaped together
on the margin of the Serpentine. Pity it is our
Chief Commissioner cannot recognise that there is
in reality ample room and verge enough elsewhere
for the exercise of the ambition of the most adven-
turous of all innovating iEdiles—say in building
up a grand central Palace of Justice between
Carey-street and the Strand, as projected by the
Royal Commissioners !—or by bordering the river
Thames upon either side with a broad and massive
and stately line of eminently useful and eminently
picturesque embankments.

DEPARTURE OF THE DUCHESS OF KENT FOR
SCOTLAND.—Yesterday morning her Royal Highness the
Duchess of Kent, attended by Lady A. Bruce and Lord
James Murray (Equerry in Waiting), took her departure
from Frog-more Lodge and proceeded by the South Western
Railway en route for Scotland. The Royal Duchess in-
tends performing:the whole of the journey without stopping.
Her Royal Highness will not return from the north before
September next.

A marriage will shortly take place between Miss
Lucy Sitwell, daughter of the late Sir George Sitwell,
Bart., of Renishaw, Derbyshire, and Mr. Ilarwald Wake,
C. 8., son of Sir Charles Wake, Bart., of Courteen Hall,
Northamptonshire.

His Highness the Prince. Poniatowski and the
Marquis of Gaviria have left the Brunswick Hotel, Jermyn-
street, for the Idle of Wight.

The Countess of Euston, accompanied by Miss
Raikes, has arrived in town frem a tour in Germany.
• Lord and Lady Wensleydale have returned to
their residence, Park-street, from York.

Sir A. Bannerman, Bart., has arrived in town
from his seat in the North of Scotland.

Mr. and the Hon. Mrs. Basset have left town for
Tchidy Park, Cornwall.
Mrs. Baillie Cochrane was safely delivered, on
Sunday last, of a son and heir, at Mr. Cochrane's residence,
in Wilton-place. The mother and child are both doing
well.

The wheat harvest has commenced in the province
of Beauce, and also in the environs of Paris.
Some foreign journals having announced that
Baron Brenier, the French Ambassador at Naples, was
about to quit that capital, the Patric and the Pais declare
the statement to be completely unfounded.

The Journal du Cher states that the Emperor has
approved of the report of the Artillery Committee, which
pointed out Bow ges as being the town best situated for the
establishment of a foundry, an arsenal, and a pyrotechnic
school.