JOURNAL OF RURAL ART AM) RURAL TASTE. 



€lrf Jlm-^nrk f ark. 



I^JIHE leading topic of town gossip and newspaper paragraphs just now, in New- York, 

 ^ is the new park proposed by Mayor Kingsland. Deluded New- York has, until 

 lately, contented itself with the little door-yards of space — mere grass plats of verdure, 

 which form the squares of the city, in the mistaken idea that they are parks. The 

 fourth city in the world, (with a growth that will soon make it the second,) the com- 

 mercial metropolis of a continent spacious enough to border both oceans, has not hith- 

 erto been able to afford sufficient land to give its citizens, (the majority of whom live 

 there the whole year round,) any breathing space for pure air, any recreation ground 

 for healthful exercise, any pleasant roads for riding or driving, or any enjoyment of 

 that lovely and refreshing natural beauty from which they have, in leaving the coun- 

 try, reluctantly expatriated themselves for so many years — perhaps for ever. Some 

 few thousands, more fortunate than the rest, are able to escape for a couple of months, 

 into the country, to find repose for body and soul, in its leafy groves and pleasant pas- 

 tures, or to inhale new life on the refreshing sea-shore. But in the mean time the city 

 is always full. Its steady population of 500,000 souls, is always there ; always on 

 the increase. Every ship brings a live cargo from over-peopled Europe, to fill up its 

 crowded lodging-houses ; every steamer brings hundreds of strangers to fill its throng- 

 ed thoroughfares. Crowded hotels, crowded streets, hot summers, business pursued till 

 it becomes a game of excitement, pleasure followed till its votaries are exhausted, 

 where is the quiet reverse side of this picture of town life, intensified almost to dis- 

 traction ? 



Mayor Kingsland spreads it out to the vision of the dwellers in this arid desert 

 of business and dissipation — a green oasis for the refreshment of the city's soul and 

 body. He tells the citizens of that feverish metropolis, as every intelligent man will 

 them who knows the cities of the old world, that New- York, and American cities 

 generally, are voluntarily and ignorantly living in a state of complete forgetfulnes of 



Aug. 1, 1851. 



No. YIII. 



