American Landscape Gardening 125 



New American Cyclopedia, wrote to Mr. Olmsted, from whom 

 Mr. Dana was soliciting an article on the title Park: "It is 

 curious that no Cyclopedia has an article on Parks or Land- 

 scape Garde7ting;" remarking also: "We have no article, 

 nor is there in any part of the work, as yet, anything bearing 

 on that subject. Under Downing we give a simple biography 

 of the man and a list of his principal works." 



Mr. Olmsted frequently commented, in contrast, on the 

 advancement of the profession of landscape gardening in 

 Europe. In his article for Appleton's Cyclopedia, we find 

 several passages, quite as true in 1857 as in 186 1 when they 

 were pubHshed, bearing on this point: 



Almost every large town in the civilized world now has 

 public pleasure grounds in some form. . . . 



Birkenhead park [which Mr. Olmsted had visited in 1850] ' 

 is a piece of ground of 185 acres in a suburb of Liverpool, and 

 is surrounded by villas the grounds of which connect with it. 

 Though small, it is by its admirable plan the most complete, 

 and for its age the most agreeable park in Europe. It was 

 designed and its construction superintended by Sir Joseph 

 Paxton and Mr. Kemp. . . . 



In the United States there is, as yet, scarcely a finished 

 park or promenade ground deserving mention. In the few 

 small fields of rank hay grasses and spindle-trunked trees, 

 to which the name is sometimes applied, the custom of the 

 promenade has never been established. Yet there is scarcely 

 a town or thriving village in which there is not found some 

 sort of inconvenient and questionable social exchange of this 

 nature. Sometimes it is a graveyard, sometimes a beach or 

 wharf, sometimes a certain part of a certain street ; sometimes 

 interest in a literary or a charitable, a military, or even a 

 mercantile enterprise, is the ostensible object which brings 

 people together. But in its European signification the prom- 

 enade exists only in the limited grounds attached to the 

 capitol and to the "white house" at Washington, and in the 

 yet half-made park of New York. . . . 



I See p. 95. 



