LAYINO-OUT OF PUBLIC PARKS. 219 



of the subject, tliat it well deserves the attention 

 recently paid to it by government. Certainly it 

 would be no misappropriation of the public funds, 

 were a commission authorized to purchase, in the sub- 

 urbs of many large towns, land sufficient for the 

 formation of a park: thus doing what might not 

 be within the power of the local corporations; and, 

 putting sanitary considerations out of the fjuestion, we 

 do not believe that, in most cases, the concern would 

 be a losing one ; for the ground-rents of the houses 

 contiguous to the park would be higher, and the sites 

 would be more readily occupied by the wealthy citi- 

 zens than elsewhere in the neighborhood. We have 

 seen es.tates, in the suburbs of large cities, which would 

 probably, by this time, have been covered with streets, 

 had the owners given, with a wise and self-rewarding 

 liberality, some thirty or forty acres to form a public 

 park — a measure which would have speedily indem- 

 nified them for the apparent loss, by the increase of 

 rental received from the remainder of the lands. By 

 forming parks round London, recent governments have 

 conferred a great boon on the inhabitants of the me- 

 tropolis. Perhaps, however, they might have pro- 

 ceeded on more judicious principles. If, instead of 

 enlarging the parks to the extent of 150 to 270 acres, 

 and placing them at considerable distances, they had 

 confined them to 80 or 100 acres, at one-half the dis- 

 tance, and had multiplied them proportionally, they 

 would have easily procured a sufficient quantity of 

 ground nearer and more accessible to all classes of the 

 inhabitants. 



Laying-out of Public Parks. — The designing of 

 tliese grounds, and the erection of the works, must 



