LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS 



CITY AND TOWN PARKS 



The office of a park is wholly different from 

 that of a village green; the same demands do 

 not suggest the two. The city square or 

 plaza is the city representative of the village 

 common : this latter being only a rural plasa 

 whereon the green-sward is a more economic 

 and appropriate pavement than stones; the in- 

 cessant traffic and wear of a metropolis do not 

 blot the grass. 



The park represents not only a demand for 

 space and trees, but a revival and reassertion 

 of country instincts which city associations 

 are only too apt to infold and entomb; but, 

 however drearily infolded, there comes 

 some day to all denizens of cities a resurrec- 

 tion of those earlier rural instincts which 

 crave growth and food — an outburst, through 

 all the stony interstices of pavement, of the 

 love of trees and green things. Not until a 

 city has become so large as to deny to very 

 many living in its interior intimate associa- 

 tion and familiarity with the encompassing 

 belt of country will this new need declare it- 

 self strongly. Nay, in a city, whose elevated 

 situation, gives outlook from its open spaces 



203 



