LAYING OUT OF GROUNDS. 199 



upon its thirty or forty thousand inhabitants within 

 the next score of years should neglect it. There can 

 be no loss in its becoming a large landholder within 

 its own territory. If the charming but costly dis- 

 guisements of a park cannot be ventured upon at 

 once, the land may at least be turned over into a 

 town farm, where the town's poor may be set to the 

 work of combing down its roughness or preparing it 

 by slow degrees, earning their own support, mean- 

 time, for the richer ends in view. The scheme is by 

 no means chimerical ; scores of workers, through the 

 less active months of the year, and who are dependent 

 on the town for partial support, might thus be put to 

 remunerative labor upon the town property. A 

 judicious design of a park as a finality upon the land 

 in question might underlie, in a measure, and qualify 

 the regular farm labors. A well-appointed drive 

 might gradually uncoil itself over the hills and 

 through the cultivated flats, the wood crop out upon 

 the cliffs, and the flowers unfold in their sequestered 

 nook's. It seems to me that a park or garden, grow- 

 ing up in this way by degrees under the tutelage of 

 the town, not fairly throwing off its economic and 

 food-providing aspect until the plantations have rip- 

 ened into fulness, would have a double charm. I 

 commend the suggestions to such boroughs as keep 

 their town's poor festering in some ill-ventilated alma- 



