The Birds’ Calendar, 
hedged about by overarching trees and luxuri- 
ant shrubbery, and enriched in the season with 
purple and pink masses of wistaria and azalea, 
while on the other side the eye ranges over the 
whole expanse of the irregular lake, flanked on 
the right by the massive and turreted ‘‘ Dakota,’’ 
its farther shore revealing a majestic row of pop- 
lars and cypresses, and beyond them a line of 
lofty buildings looming up like castle walls for 
a solid background, and with the two white 
spires of the Cathedral pricking the sky in the 
blue distance. A pair of large night herons, 
coursing hither and thither over the water, 
give the requisite and poetic touch of anima- 
tion. 
The fashionable world, luxuriously parading 
in elegant equipages along the great driveways, 
has doubtless been the chief means whereby the 
Park has attained its national repute as a tri- 
umph of landscape gardening ; but its finest ef- 
fects are scattered along the less frequented ways, 
and wealth will never see them until it goes afoot. 
Somehow, too, one never seems to get into that 
responsive mood wherein Nature can make her 
best revealments, until he comes down from all 
artificial elevation, and becomes an integral part 
of all his surroundings by actual contact with 
266 
