92 Frederick Law Olmsted 



benefactor of our race and to desire almost above all things 

 to do something to extend and prolong his influence. Al- 

 though he had a philosophic turn of mind, I do not doubt 

 that he builded better than he knew in that the plans and 

 instructions which he gave to the public were far less ex- 

 cellent with reference to their ostensible ends, than they were 

 with reference to the purpose of stimulating the exercise of 

 judgment and taste in the audience addressed. 



There are also a number of little sheets which Mr. Olm- 

 sted had had printed off, perhaps for the same occasion, and 

 perhaps for some other public use, bearing the following 

 quotation, — which expresses Mr. Olmsted's own ideals of 

 democracy as well : 



"And yet this broad ground of popular refinement must be 

 taken in republican America, for it belongs of right more truly 

 here than elsewhere. It is republican in its very idea and ten- 

 dency. It takes up popular education where the common school 

 and ballot-box leave it, and raises up the working man to the 

 same level of enjoyment with the man of leisure and accomplish- 

 ment. The higher social and artistic elements of every man's 

 nature lie dormant within him, and every laborer is a possible 

 gentleman, not by the possession of money or fine clothes, but 

 through the refining influence of intellectual and moral culture. 

 Open wide, therefore, the doors of your libraries and picture 

 galleries, all ye true republicans! Build halls where knowledge 

 shall be freely diffused among men, and not shut up within the 

 narrow walls of narrower institutions. Plant spacious parks in 

 your cities, and unloose their gates as wide as the gates of morning 

 to the whole people. As there are no dark places at noon day, so 

 education and culture — the true sunshine of the soul — will banish 

 the plague spots of democracy; and the dread of the ignorant 

 exclusive, who has no faith in the refinement of a republic, will 

 stand abashed in the next century, before a whole people whose 

 system of voluntary education embraces (combined with perfect 

 individual freedom), not only common schools of rudimentary 

 knowledge, but common enjoyments for all classes in the higher 

 realms of art, letters, science, social recreations, and enjoyments. 



