Happily the new self-consciousness is taking note of these things. That strange lumbering body which we call "the mother of parliaments" has dimly reflected the better thought of the community, and given a feeble sort of protection to ancient monuments. The newspapers have lately managed to excite some public interest in a fine old house in Dean Street, Soho, and to arouse a feeling of shame that the richest city in the richest Empire of the world should allow the few remnants of beautiful things of the past still existing in its midst to be destroyed by the uncontrolled operation of mercenary "progress." I have, in common with many others, visited this doomed mansion. It is a charming old place, of no great size or importance, and, with its well-proportioned panelled rooms and fine staircase, was destined to be a private residence. It is not large enough to be a museum, but its rooms might serve for the show place of a first-rate maker or vender of things of fine workmanship. There ought to be some public authority--municipal or departmental--with power to acquire such interesting houses as this, not necessarily to convert them into permanent public shows, but to keep them in repair, and to let them on lease, at a reasonable rent, to tenants, subject to the condition of their being open on certain days in the year to artists and others provided with orders of admission by the authority. In other countries such arrangements are made; with us they are not made simply because we have not assigned to any authority the duty of acting in this way for the public benefit. Our public authorities have little or no public spirit, and resemble private committees, councils, and individuals in evading and refusing even the smallest increase of responsibility and activity beyond that which they are compelled by law to discharge. Unless they are legally compelled to interfere, all records of art and nature may perish before they will incur the inconvenience of moving a finger! Consequently the only thing to be done is to assign such duties by law to an existing authority, or to one created for such purposes.
The same tale of destruction and irreparable damage has to be told of our dealings with the beauty of once unsullied moorland, meadow, marsh, forest, river-bank, and seashore. But the destruction has here been more gradual, less obvious on account of remoteness, and more subtle in its creeping, insinuating method, like that of a slowly-spreading infective disease. The word "country" has to a very large extent ceased to signify to us "outlying nature beyond the man-made town," occupied only in little tracts here and there by the immemorial tillers of the soil. The splendid and age-long industry of our field-workers has made much of our land a garden. Now they themselves are disappearing or changed beyond recognition, losing their traditional arts and crafts, their distinctive and venerable dialects, and their individuality. The land is enclosed, drained, manured; food plants produced by the agriculturist replace the native plants; forests are cut down and converted into parks and pheasant-runs; foreign trees are substituted for those native to the soil. Commons, heaths, and wild moorlands have been enclosed by eager land-grabbers, the streams are polluted by mining or chemical works, or if kept clean are artificially overstocked with hand-fed trout; whilst the open roads reek of tar and petroleum. The "wilderness" is fast disappearing, and it is by this name that we must distinguish from the mere "country," as much besmirched and devastated by man as are the sites of his towns and cities, the regions where untouched nature still survives and is free from the depredations of humanity. Many beautiful and rare plants which once inhabited our countryside have perished; many larger animals (such as wolf, beaver, red-deer, marten-cats, and wild-cats) have disappeared, as well as many insects, great and small, such as the swallow-tailed butterfly and the larger copper butterfly, and many splendid birds.