Relations with Downing 93 



Were our legislators but wise enough to understand, today, the 

 destinies of the New World, the gentility of Sir Philip Sidney, 

 made universal, would be not half so much a miracle fifty years 

 hence in America as the idea of a whole nation of laboring-men 

 reading and writing, was, in his day, in England. " 



— A. J. Downing. 



Mr. Olmsted and Mr. Vaux were consulted in i860 with 

 regard to the memorial to Mr. Downing appropriately pro- 

 posed to be erected in the Central Park but never carried out, 

 and again in 1889 with reference to the Downing memorial 

 park at Newburgh. Mrs. Downing, ^ who afterwards married 

 Judge Monell, was a lifelong friend of the Vauxes and 

 Olmsteds. 



' In 1867 Mrs. Downing, who had then become Mrs. Monell, wrote to Mr. 

 Olmsted thanking him for " editing " Downing 's Cottage Residences. The 

 "editing" was probably limited to a friendly revision of proofs, since the 

 posthumous editions of the book contain no references to Mr. Olmsted as 

 editor. 



