The Embankment Gardens, between Westminster and Blackfriars, are much frequented. At all seasons of the year the seats are crowded, and now, with the statues, bands playing in summer, refreshment buffet, and newspaper kiosk, they look more like a foreign garden than the usual solemn squares of London. During the dinner-hour they are filled with the printers from the many newspaper offices near, and the band was in the first instance paid for by the Press.
They are divided into three sections, and measure ten acres in all, not including the garden beyond the Victoria Tower. The peace has been utterly destroyed by the din of trams, which are for ever passing and repassing, and it is much to be feared that the trees next the river, which were growing so well, will not withstand the ill-treatment they have received-the cutting of roots and depriving them of moisture. The Gardens are entirely on the ground made up when the Embankment was formed, between 1864 and 1870.
The Gardens were opened in 1870, but many improvements have since been made in the design, and various statues put up to famous men. One is to John Stuart Mill, and at the Westminster end, one of William Tyndall, the translator of the New Testament and Pentateuch, to which translation is due much of the beautiful language of the Authorised Version of the Bible.
