While my leg-less lead King, from his war-horse o'erthrown,
Proclaims in his downfall that highest of laws,
"Vested rights are still rights, whate'er nuisance they cause."
Later on in the year there is a cartoon aimed at Ayrton, the unpopular Chief Commissioner of Works in which "Ayrton the (B)Ædile" is shown pointing to the battered statue from which the figure of the rider had been removed, and saying "Ha! Now that's a style of Art I flatter myself I really do understand."
From this derelict condition Leicester Square was rescued by the enterprise and munificence of Baron Albert Grant, whose chequered career was largely redeemed by an act which gave us the Square as we know it. Under the heading, "Grant in Aid and a Check that wants Crossing," Punch gratefully records his intervention and the difficulties which delayed the execution of the scheme.
The greatest of all the improvements that belong to this period was the Thames Embankment, which had formed part of Wren's scheme for the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. Not until nearly two hundred years had elapsed was Parliamentary sanction obtained for carrying out the plan. It was vigorously opposed in the House of Lords by the Duke of Buccleuch, and Punch, on July 5, 1862, published a cartoon with the heading, "Sawney stops the way." John Bull, driving a bus labelled "Embankment," is confronted by a fully armed and kilted Scottish chieftain waving a banner inscribed, "Buccleuch and No Thoroughfare," while Punch as conductor remarks, "Drive on, John; never mind the Scotchman." John Bull drove on, and early in August, 1868, Punch celebrated (though somewhat ironically) the completion of the footway opening of the Embankment from Westminster to Essex Street. As Sir Joseph Bazalgette, who was responsible for the plans and their execution, was engineer to the Metropolitan Board of Works, Punch could not resist the opportunity for ridiculing his old bête noire Sir John Thwaites, the chairman, and his colleagues, the feu de joie loosed off by a sergeant and two bombardiers R.A., and the subsequent junketings at Woolwich. The Victoria Embankment from Blackfriars to Westminster was not opened to the public till 1870, the Albert Embankment on the south side from Westminster Bridge to Vauxhall in the same year; while the Chelsea Embankment from Battersea Bridge to Chelsea Bridge was finished in 1874. Taken together they constitute the greatest addition to the amenities of London made in our time, to say nothing of the reclamation of swamp and slime from the river and their conversion into what is perhaps the finest roadway in London. Cleopatra's Needle was originally presented to England by Mehemet Ali in 1819. Engineering difficulties stood in the way of its removal from Egypt for nearly sixty years. The question is discussed by Punch in 1869, but it was not till 1877 that the munificence of Sir Erasmus Wilson and the skill of John Dixon solved the problem of its transportation to its present site.
UNDERGROUND RAILWAY
Old Lady: "Well, I'm sure no woman with the least sense of decency would think of going down that way to it."