LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 41 



j which it is seen, but making it always the essential object 

 of the picture. Instead of this, the park is cut off from 

 the lake by a low range of sandhills which must be 

 crossed before it can be seen. No art whatever has been 

 applied to give a 'picturesque effect by the use of such 

 accessories as would excite emotions in keeping with the 

 grandeur or the beauty of the scene. The visitor crosses 

 the hill and the blank sheet of water lies before him in 

 its full extent, and all at once. No previous glimpses of 

 portions of it, seen through distant openings between the 

 hills or under an archway of overhanging foliage, awakens 

 curiosity and excites the imagination by the intricacy and 

 variety thus afforded ; and indeed, so far as any pleasure 

 is derivable from the view of the lake, the park offers no 

 advantages over the wharves of the city. Yet with this 

 magnificent sheet of water at hand to furnish the key 

 note of whatever improvements might be attempted on 

 its shores, the prominent decoration of the park is an 

 elaborately artificial lake which seems to have been con- 

 structed for the purpose of exhibiting a further display of 

 such childish toys as adorn the squares. More rustic 

 bridges, a miniature castle, and a grotto of imitation stone 

 adorned with colored glass, the effect of which when 

 lighted up, as a Chicago paper gravely informed its read- 

 ers, "is quite equal to that of the celebrated grotto in 

 Wood's Museum ! " 



To return, however, to the subject of rectangular 

 arrangement, from which I have wandered. 



If one has occasion to cross any considerable portion 

 of the city on a line diagonal to the uniform course 



