88 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 



familiar with slovenliness and disregard of all effort to 

 give an attractive expression to the place where the work 

 of education is conducted? No impression upon the 

 youthful mind exerts a more powerful and lasting influ- 

 ence than that which is made by daily familiar inter- 

 course with scenes of simple natural beauty, and the 

 man whose boyhood was passed amid such scenes will 

 find that he recurs to them in after life with a keener 

 sense of their loveliness, as he contrasts them with the 

 magnificence and ostentatious display which mark a more 

 artificial condition of life. 



Whatever may be thought, however, of pre-arranged 

 designs for proposed towns, the importance of an early 

 attention to suburban improvements, is one which cannot 

 be too strongly urged upon multitudes of already thriving 

 and rapidly growing cities throughout the West. The 

 opportunities which are often available of attaining 

 possession of tracts of land, by the improvement of 

 which the beauty and attractive interest of the city can 

 be incalculably increased, while at the same time a lucra- 

 tive return is secured in the form of increased valuation 

 of taxable property should not be suffered to escape. 



The increase of population and consequent increased 

 value of real estate in Western cities is a matter which 

 may be said to be almost as certain as the laws of 

 nature. Different ratios of growth of course exist, but it 

 would be hard to find a town of 10,000 inhabitants that 

 is likely to remain stationary and easy to designate many 

 which will not stop short of five or ten times that num- 

 ber. Every man who has lived a few years in the West 



