The Sun.
London, England, 1859-08-12 00:00:00

TllB SERPENTINE.

(From the Times.)'
The comparison between the two plans for the
purification of the Serpentine is that the one has
been tried with perfect success and the other, as
yet, is a speculation, from which it would be rash
to predict any success at all. The lake in St.
James's-park is the admiration of everybody
who strays into that paradise of children, nurses,
and Life Guardsmen. The water is as free from
colour and from smell as any lake in the country,
and nobody would guess that it had been obtained
by artificial means, except that other wise it would
not be sweet. As you look at the bottom you have
the satisfaction of knowing that London dirt can-
not come in. That is the result of the operation at
St. James's. It is safe to last centuries, and it cost
but a trifle. It was stated yesterday that the water
filtered through the concrete into the sand below,
and was pumped up again ; and the inference was
that the process was illusory. The statement itself
is illusory. The water is, pumped up from a bed
of clear sand, saturated with water not merely
from the lake, but from the whole surrounding
area open to the rain. The stratum of sand under
St. James's Park communicates with a very exten-
sive area, and so long as the Thames flows it will
never be dry. It is said, indeed, that the quick-
sands under London are becoming drier in the pro-
cess of ages, and St. Paul's is supposed to have set-
tled somewhat towards the river in consequence of
this change. This would be the natural result of
the rain over many thousand acres being inter-
cepted by houses and pavements, and carried off
straight to the Thames. But we may be quite
sure that low beds of sand will always hold water
quite sufficient for the supply of such ponds as
those in our parks. •
But what is the other process defended again
last night by Mr. Fitzroy, and now backed by Mr.
Stephenson's formidable, but not infallible, autho-
rity ? It is to leave the bed of the Serpentine alone,
and to touch only the water. This is to be drawn
by engines from the Knightsbridge end into a se-
parate reservoir at the Bayswater end, there fil-
tered, and returned into the Serpentine. To purify
a lake by taking the water out of it, cleaning it,
and throwing it back again, has the merit of origi-
nality, and we certainly never heard of it before. If
it answers, a time must come when the process 'will
be wholly superfluous, for if the Serpentine really
has no sources of corruption, its water, once puri-
fied, will always be pure. But Mr. Fitzroy evi-
dently does not anticipate this perfect success.
His two donkey-engines, the elegance of which will
disguise their base use, are I o puff and blow for
ever. The people of Bayswater and all the region
thereabouts aro not to know but -what the engine-
house is occupied by hermits, or nymphs, or some
other sylvan personages. But what graceful ex-
terior, what columns or buttresses, what pediments
or pinnacles can disguise a filtering bed which is
to extend over only three-fourths of an acre ?
Imagine a pond, a hundred yards long and forty
yards wide, filled with Serpentine water, deposit-
ing organic matter in its bed, which is every now
and then to be exposed to the sun, dried, swept,
and carted away ! Mr. Fitzroy, indeed, allude's to
another process, which, as it is totally incompre•
hensible, can exist only in the form of an agreeable
dream. He supposes the pure water to flow into
the Serpentine, and the dirty water into the Rene-
legit sewer. As this must be done by mechanical
separation, the process cannot but be complicated,
and we incline to suspect that Mr. Fitzroy will
find his £17,000 sunk in the mud and gone down
the sewer before there is any pure water to show
for it. At all events, there is this pond of concen-
trated Serpentine in a constant state of commotion
and separation. Contrary to the warning, it is to
produce bitter waters and sweet. It is to form at
once a lake and a sewer, and not to be a nuisance
to anybody.
If Mr. Fitzroy feeds the Serpentine with itself,
it will only be Serpentine after all, and like feeding
a dog with a joint of its own tail. It is only ar-
guing in a circle. The water is to come from a
filtering bed, fed by a. steam engine, supplied by
the Serpentine, and meanwhile there is the accumu-
lated mud of centuries lying no one knows how
many feet deep at the bottom of the Serntine,
always giving out poisonous gases. Such is the
scheme to be substituted for one of the very few
plans that have been tried and found to answer.
Make the Serpentine, like St. James's, a great
artificial lake, a mere basin, •or stone tazza.
Insulate it wholly from the surrounding
soil. Supply it with water as pure as we
ought to supply to the fountains in Trafal-
gar-square, or those at the Crystal Palace,
from any depth you please. Contract, if necessary,
with the New River Company. If the bed of the
river be levelled and sealed with concrete, the
water will flow out as pure as it flows in. The
levelling of the bottom, and the reduction of the
Serpentine to one uniform depth of five feet or so,
is only a matter of earthwork, a very light affair
compared with many of those in our railways.
The bottom levelled, and the concrete laid, the work
is done for ever, and the Serpentine will cease to
suggest Oen, the imagination of an unsavoury per-
fume. At press t half the world hold their noses
as they pass ; half the 'world snuff the gale as if it
came from the Spice Isles. There ought to be no
question at all ; the Serpentine ought not even to
be suspected. It may be better
than it has been,
but virtue is not a matter of degree ; we want tne
Serpentine to be quite pure. When the gat Com-
missioner of Public Works to King Augeas wa,!
charged with the purification of his Majesty,.
stables, he did not go on pouring over the oxen and
the stalls the water that had just flowed from them;
he drew the pure water from elsewhere, anid passed
it through, never to return.