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The Serpentine, before the “levelling-up” operations commenced, was in very bad repute. Its depth was supposed to be very great in some places; a delusion its drainage has dispelled, for it appears to be nowhere above 12 or 14 feet deep. Its bottom was supposed to be foul with the accumulated sediment from the sewers which discharged themselves into it for many years; its drainage has shown it to be foul beyond all conception, and the wonder is that its water was not more impure than we know it to have been, resting on such a thick stratum of abominations. The water was impure,[Footnote 4] there is no denying it, and its impurity was often as obvious to the nose as to the eye. And yet a swim in the old Serpentine on a cool spring or autumn morning was not a bad thing—experto credite. It was a fine expanse of water, with beautiful surroundings. The eye rested with pleasure on the green sward of the park, the stately old elms, the picturesque bridge, the pretty little Swiss boathouse, and the monstrous black Duke prancing over the trees. Then if you did not examine too minutely the green confervæ that rendered the water almost opaque, if you kept your eyes more skyward, if you became used to the faint ditch-water smell around you, and “made believe a good deal,” you might almost fancy yourself disporting in a retired lake far away in the country. The company was not so bad as was usually supposed. The roughs don’t like getting up early even to wash themselves, so there were few of them; they mostly deferred their bathing till the evening. Most of the bathers seemed quiet, steady, respectable people. The regular bathers would generally bring along with them a bit of carpet, or hire a rug from the Humane Society’s boatmen to lay their clothes on, and thus save them getting wet by the dew. There was room and to spare for all on the broad bosom of London’s great lake, and when you could forget the stories about the horrors below you, and refrain from looking too curiously at the green abominations that thickened the water, a long swim in the deep placid Serpentine, with the sun shining down on you, and the gentle breeze fanning you, was infinitely preferable to any cold or tepid swimming bath in London. If the lover of the swimming bath is to gain nothing by the works now going on in the Serpentine besides clear water in a shallow bed, he will, perhaps, rather regret the loss of his deep but dirty lake. Bathing was permitted in the Serpentine from 5 to 8 a.m., and again after sunset for an hour or so; but no provision at all was made for the accommodation of bathers, beyond a couple of boats belonging to the Humane Society stationed near where most bathers resorted.