For many a man that may not stand a pull, Yet liketh it him at the wrestlyng for to be, says Chaucer in his 'Parliament of Birds;' and a dis sertation on street-architecture would be as far from my powers as it is outside the purpose of the present book. Still, a humble plea for a little beauty in our streets may not be quite out of place.

Black as are our old streets, crooked without pictur-esqueness, and not over healthy, there is an interest attaching to them which we could not transfer to newly-built rows of clean houses. Every narrow and muddy old road has its associations, its haunting figures of the past which we should be sorry to lose; and the Thames Embankment itself cost many a sigh to people not blind to the advantages it offered.

But we might clean up, brighten, and add comfort to our old streets without disturbing the lines or destroy ing associations worth keeping, in a good many cases which we neglect. We might plant more trees, as in Paris and all continental towns, which would not only improve the look but the sanitary condition of the atmosphere. We might materially improve the drainage in places by legislating against family alliances between sanitary inspectors and bad landlords; and we might invent a form of cement or paint sufficiently waterproof to throw off rainstreams without arresting the soot in them.

The advantage of trees in clearing the air of smuts must be apparent to all who have trees near their houses. Virginia creepers and other plants on house-fronts are a perpetual refreshment to the eye in summer, and a few boxes of gay flowers are a boon to all the passers-by as well as oneself.

But plants, in our dull streets, do not tell against dirty brick. I recently noticed, for the first time, a creeper-smothered house in a narrow street I often pass; but the brickwork is so dingy that it neither throws up the green, as red brick would do, nor is materially improved by the leaves, which in the absence of much sunlight form with it one uniform dingy tint. People ought really to point their brick oftener, or cover it, like the cleanly Dutch, with a coat of paint; over this a quick-growing creeper would be a really picturesque ornament, as plants against a coloured fence invariably are. For London-bred green things require a background which exhibits them, as much as any other artistic objects.

What a refreshment to the eye would be trees planted along Regent Street, with an occasional seat such as Paris found good and necessary. Even in winter, when they are black and bare, the netted branches break the blankness of the scene. The objection hitherto urged is that our populace are more destructive than the same class abroad; and that all such decoration would be visited by the street Arab's piopensity to cut signs and wonders in the bark. But this is no longer a valid objection. The Arab is mending his ways as we mend hint, and the hapless green strangers about the Thames Embankment and Leicester Square have come to no great harm.

Among trees, the plane appears one of the best suited to London. It is less easily killed by soot than others, owing to its cleanly personal habits. It strives so hard to keep itself wholesome by changing its bark year by year. The plane appears less popular with poets than other trees, and is seldom mentioned; it is hard to say why. It is a very stately tree, with a broad, handsome, well-cut leaf capitally adapted to crack on the fist after the manner of schoolboys; and the seeds, great balls of soft green and brown velvet, are surely as pretty as acorns!

Let us beautify our streets by planting more trees; and let us cease to deface them by sticking up metal chimneys.