THE NEW-YORK PARK. 149 



by the narrow-sighted frugality of the common council who were 

 its building committee, and who determined that it would be useless 

 to waste marble on the rear of the City-Hall, " since that side would 

 only be seen by persons living in the suburbs." 



Thanking Mayor Kingsland most heartily for his proposed new 

 park, the only objection we make to it is that it is too small. One 

 hundred and sixty acres of park for a city that will soon contain 

 three-quarters of a million of people ! It is only a child's play- 

 ground. Why London has over six thousand acres either within 

 its own limits, or in the accessible suburbs, open to the enjoyment 

 of its population and six thousand acres composed too, either of 

 the grandest and most lovely park scenery, like Kensington and 

 Richmond, or of luxuriant gardens, filled with rare plants, hot-houses, 

 and hardy shrubs and trees, like the National Garden at Kew. 

 Paris has its Garden of the Tuileries, whose alleys are lined with 

 orange-trees two hundred years old, whose parterres are gay with 

 the brightest flowers, whose cool groves of horse-chestnuts, stretching 

 out to the Elysian Fields, are in the very midst of the city. Yes, 

 and on its outskirts are Versailles (three thousand acres of imperial 

 groves and gardens there also), and Fontainbleau, and St. Cloud, 

 with all the rural, scenic, and palatial beauty that the opulence of 

 the most profuse of French monarchs could create, all open to the 

 people of Paris. Vienna has its great Prater, to make which, would 

 swallow up most of the "unimproved" part of New-York city. 

 Munich has a superb pleasure-ground of five hundred acres, which 

 makes the Arcadia of her citizens. Even the smaller towns are pro- 

 vided with public grounds to an extent that would beggar the imag- 

 ination of our short-sighted economists, who would deny " a green- 

 ery" to New-York; Frankfort, for example, is skirted by the most 

 beautiful gardens, formed upon the platform which made the old 

 ramparts of the city gardens filled with the loveliest plants and 

 shrubs, tastefully grouped along walks over two miles in extent. 



Looking at the present government of the city as about to pro- 

 vide, in the People's Park, a breathing zone, and healthful place for 

 exercise for a city of half a million of souls, we trust they will not 

 be content with the limited number of acres already proposed. 

 Five hundred acres is the smallest area that should be reserved for 



