PREFACE TO THE TWENTY-THIRD EDITION

IN this edition, which has long been over-due, but which I could not prepare while the disturbance caused to our galleries by the War was still evident, the new—and, for a long time, definite—re-arrangement of the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery, and the Wallace Collection, is followed. Note is also taken of many changes in London since the last thorough revision some years ago, without, however, trenching upon the preserves of "London Revisited," a companion or supplementary volume, which appeared during the War, describes certain minor galleries and all the statuary and memorial tablets and roams as far afield as Hampton Court.

Fortunately for the world, if less satisfactory to authors who dislike to be out of date, such institutions as the National Gallery and the Tate and the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert, are never complete. Almost every week sees some new picture added, and every day some new exhibit of interest. For instance, even while I was preparing the present edition the Wertheimer portraits by Mr. Sargent, now the property of the nation, were hung in Trafalgar Square.

London's structural changes are also continuous. Devonshire House long since ceased to be ducal ; as I write there is rumour of the demolition of the Adelphi and the shifting of Charing Cross Station to the other side of the river; the space between the statue of Lord Holland, seated now among cabbages and beans, and Holland House at his back, is a school for the intensive culture of golf ; Regent Street is to be rebuilt, more Tubes are threatened. Piccadilly Circus at night emulates the great White Way of New York, and an American business firm has provided the island site in the Strand, on the ruins of Holywell Street, with as fine a specimen of steel girder and stone construction as we have, with a magnificent archway on the north which you see before you all the way down Kingsway. When I wrote this book, in 1905, the cinema was in its infancy. There are now hundreds of picture theatres in London, among them two originally planned for Grand Opera. There are also many more theatres proper, but a decline in the popularity of the music hall is noticeable and we have no circus at all.

In 1922 the tree in the midst of Staple Inn—that beautiful spreading plane tree which intended no harm to any one and offered shelter to a thousand sparrows every evening—was cut down.

Among the most beautiful of the recent additions to London's structures I should name the Cenotaph in Whitehall, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and the little Armenian Church, which occurs so surprisingly in all its whiteness and symmetry in the middle of Iverna Court at Kensington. The County Council Hall opposite the Houses of Parliament is impressive and it rises from the river in the good old way; but I am personally doubtful about its red tiles.

Lastly let me say, with extreme satisfaction, that when I wrote this book no such list of Sunday openings as this, which I cut from the "Observer" in February, 1923, could have been printed in any London Sunday paper:—

MUSEUMS AND PICTURE GALLERIES.

National Gallery 2.0 to Dusk.

National Portrait Gallery 2.0 " 4.0 p.m.

British Museum 2.0 " 4.0 p.m.

Wallace Collection 2.0 " 5.0 p.m,

Tate Gallery, Millbank 2.0 to 4.0 p.m.

Victoria and Albert Museum 2.30 " 6.0 p.m.

Natural History Museum . . . . . 2.30 " 6.0 p.m.

London Museum 2.0 “ 4.0 p.m.

Science Museum 2.30 “ 6.0 p.m.

Bethnal Green Museum 2.30 “ 6.0 p.m.

Geological Survey and Museum 2.30 to Dusk.

Horniman Museum 2.0 “ 8.0 p.m.

Curving Museum, Walworth-road . . . 6.0 “ 9.0 p.m.

Geffrye Museum, Kingsland-road 2.0 “ 6.0 p.m.

So we do advance a little !

E. V. L.

May, 1923