J48 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



are exhausted, where is the quiet reverse side of this picture of town 

 life, intensified almost to distraction ? 



Mayor Kingsland spreads it out to the vision of the dwellers in 

 this arid desert of business and dissipation a green oasis for the re- 

 freshment of the city's soul and body. He tells the citizens of that 

 feverish metropolis, as every intelligent man will tell them who knows 

 the cities of the old world, that New-York, and American cities 

 generally, are voluntarily and ignorantly living in a state of com- 

 plete forgetfulness of nature, and her innocent recreations. That, 

 because it is needful in civilized life for men to live in cities, yes, 

 and unfortunately too, for children to be born and educated without 

 a daily sight of the blessed horizon, it is not, therefore, needful for 

 them to be so miserly as to live utterly divorced from all pleasant 

 and healthful intercourse with gardens, and green fields. He in- 

 forms them that cool umbrageous groves have not forsworn them- 

 selves within town limits, and that half a million of people have a 

 right to ask for the "greatest happiness" of parks and pleasure- 

 grounds, as well as for paving stones and gas-lights. 



Now that public opinion has fairly settled that a park is neces- 

 sary, the parsimonious declare that the plot of one hundred and 

 sixty acres proposed by Mayor Kingsland is extravagantly large. 

 Short-sighted economists ! If the future growth of the city were 

 confined to the boundaries their narrow vision would fix, it would 

 soon cease to be the commercial emporium of the country. If they 

 were the purveyors of the young giant, he would soon present the 

 sorry spectacle of a robust youth magnificently developed, but whose 

 extremities had outgrown every garment that they had provided to 

 cover his nakedness. 



These timid tax-payers, and men nervous in their private pockets 

 of the municipal expenditures, should take a lesson from some of 

 their number to whose admirable foresight we owe the unity of ma- 

 terials displayed in the New- York City-Hall. Every one familiar 

 with New- York, has wondered or smiled at the apparent perversity 

 of taste which gave us a building in the most conspicuous part of 

 the city, and devoted to the highest municipal uses, three sides of 

 which are pure white marble, and the fourth of coarse, brown stone. 

 But few of those who see that incongruity, know that it was dictated 



