THE NEW-YORK PARK. 



nature, and her innocent recreations. Tliat because it is needful in civilized life for 

 men to live in cities, — yes, and unfortunately too, for children to be born and educated 

 without a daily sight of the blessed horizon, — it is not, therefore, needful for them to be so 

 miserly as to live utterly divorced from all pleasant and healthful intercourse with 

 gardens and green fields. He informs them that cool umbrageous groves have not for- 

 sworn themselves within town limits, and that half a million of people have a right to 

 ask for the "greatest happiness" of parks and pleasure grounds, as well as for paving 

 stones and gas lights. 



Now that public opinion has fairly settled that a park is necessary, the parsimoni- 

 ous declare that the plot of 160 acres proposed by Mayor Kingsland is extravagant- 

 ly large. Short sighted economists ! If the future growth of the city were confined 

 to the boundaries their narrow vision would fix, it would soon cease to be the com- 

 mercial emporium of the country. If they were the purveyors of the young giant, he 

 would soon present the sorry spectacle of a robust youth magnificently developed, but 

 whose extremities had outgrown every garment that they had provided to cover his na- 

 kedness. 



These timid tax-payers, and men nervous in their private pockets of the municipal 

 expenditures, should take a lesson from some of their number to whose admirable fore- 

 sight we owe the unity of materials displayed in the New- York City-Hall. Every 

 one familiar with New- York, has wondered or smiled at the apparent perversity of 

 taste which gave us a building — in the most conspicuous part of the city, and devoted 

 to the highest municipal uses, three sides of which are pure white marble, and the 

 fourth, of coarse, brown stone. But few of those who see that incongruity, know that 

 it was dictated by the narrow sighted frugality of the common council who were its 

 building committee, and who determined that it would be useless to waste marble on 

 the rear of the City-Hall, " siiice that side would only be seen by 'persons living in 

 the suburbs V 



Thanking Mayor Kingsland most heartily for his proposed new park, the only 

 objection we make to it is that it is too small. One hundred and sixty acres of park for 

 a city that will soon contain three-quarters of a million of people ? It is only a child's 

 play-ground. Why London has over six thousand acres either within its own limits, 

 or in the accessible suburbs, open to the enjoyment of its population — and six thou- 

 sand acres composed too, either of the grandest and most lovely park scenery, like 

 Kensington and Richmond, or of luxuriant gardens, filled with rare plants, hot-houses 

 and hardy shrubs and trees, like the National Garden at Kew. Paris has its Garden 

 of the Tuilleries, whose alleys are lined with orange trees two hundred years old, whose 

 parterres are gay with the brightest flowers, whose cool groves of horse-chestnuts, 

 stretching out to the Elysian Fields, are in the very midst of the city. Yes, and on 

 its out-skirts are Versailles, (three thousand acres of imperial groves and gardens there 

 also,) and Fontainbleau, and St. Cloud, with all the rural, scenic, and palatial beauty 

 that the opulence of the most profuse of French monarchs could create, all open to 

 jjeuple of Paris. Vienna has its great Prater, to make which, would swall 

 of the " unimproved" part of New- York city. Munich has a superb plea: 



