and Rural Economy. 273 



strongly exciting as the sport is, did not quite reconcile me to it ; and the 

 wailings and shriekings of the affrighted and dying hares in the jaws of 

 the hounds, sounded in my ears for several days afterwards like the cries 

 of expiring children. 



1 shall not be straying from my proper duty if I urge the beneficent ex- 

 ample of London strongly upon my own countrymen. Excepting the Com- 

 mon in Boston — containing about forty-five acres of ground, exceedingly 

 beautiful in its location and improvements — and tw^o other small openings 

 in -Franklin-Place and Louisburg-square, both upon a very limited scale, 

 here is a large and constantly increasing population crowded together in 

 one dense mass, with narrow streets and confined alleys, and basement 

 stories, doomed to a comparative privation of Heaven's freest and great- 

 est blessings — light and air. A Botanical and Pleasure Garden has been 

 laid out, and is maintained by private subscription, accessible to subscrib- 

 ers or upon the payment of a light fee, which it is earnestly to be hoped 

 for the credit of this city, long distinguished by its liberality and public 

 spirit, may receive every encouragement, so that its improvements and ad- 

 vantages may be greatly extended. New York, with a population of 

 three times the extent of Boston, is scarcely more favored, excepting in 

 the width of its streets , for, with the exception of those delighful 

 grounds, the Ba-ttery, at the very extremity of the city, the open space in 

 front of the City Hall, dignified, far excellence, by the name of the Park, 

 and the open grounds attached to St. John's Church, but not accessible to 

 the public, the city has no provision of this kind for public recreation and 

 health. As there is little room in the city proper which can now be ob- 

 tained, she ought at once, at any expense, to secure the charming grounds 

 at Hoboken, to be devoted forever and exclusively to these objects. Hav- 

 ing already, with the most honorable enterprise, achieved one of the most 

 extraordinary enterprises of the age, or indeed of any age, that of bring- 

 ing, by a capacious tunnel of forty miles in lengih, a river of pure water 

 into her city, and dispensing, with an unrestrained munificence to those 

 who cannot purchase it, this most important element, next to vital air, of 

 human existence ; let her go on, and make the other provision, to which I 

 have referred, for the health and comfort of a population already great, 

 and destined to increase with an unexampled rapidity beyond any bounds 

 which the imagination would now even dare to prescribe. 



Philadelphia has set a better example than most other cities in this re- 

 spect, in having laid out her streets of a capacious width, in having given 

 to most of her houses, yards or gardens of a good size, and in having 

 formed, in dilferent parts of the city, public squares of some extent, which 

 are equally ornamental and useful. But she has done little compared with 

 what she might have done ; and it is to be hoped that she will be promp- 

 ted to add to a city, the most convenient and beautiful in the Union, some 

 public gardens and pleasure grounds, admission to which shall be freely 

 offered to her inhabitants ; and more especially for the benefit of that class 

 of them who can have no such indulgences but as the offerings of public 

 beneficence. Baltimore has nothing that deserves the name of a square 

 or pleasure-ground, unless we are to rank under that designation the 

 beautiful enclosure which she has recently purchased for a cemetery ; a 

 place, indeed, for a melancholy and instructive pleasure, but more proper- 

 ly devoted to silence and seclusion, and not at all of the character to 

 which I refer. Lowell — destined to contain a large and laborious popula- 

 VOL. X. — NO. VII. 35 



