554 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 196. 





enable us to enjoy those simple pleasures which come 

 from sympathetic contact with the woods and fields ; it has 

 a special value in creating and directing sentiment in 

 favor of public parks and gardens for towns and cities. 



The Linnean Club has taken special pains to interest 

 the children. This has been done in many ways. The 

 idea of a playground has been a fundamental one through- 

 out the whole discussion. In the beautiful flower-show 

 which was held about a fortnight ago the prizes were 

 not given to professionals, although the local florists 

 kindly helped to make the show attractive, and one of 

 them, at least, offered premiums for competition ; but prizes 

 were offered for wild flowers gathered by the children and 

 for plants cultivated by persons under sixteen years of age. 

 This not only encouraged the study of plants in the most 

 practical way, but it insured the help of the children in the 

 work of winning a park. The public schools entered 

 heartily into the project for a pleasure-ground which was 

 to be a place for the amusement of boys and girls as well 

 as for grown people, and one of the most interesting fea- 

 tures of the final ceremonies was a contribution of fifty 

 dollars raised in small sums from the pocket-money of the 

 pupils in the public schools. The children who gave their 

 mites for Highland Park will not forget to care for it when 

 they become men and women. 



Jamaica was in special need of this public playground, 

 and many other villages which lie just beyond the suburbs 

 of rapidly growing cities have a like need of speedy relief. 

 Even now there is often as little space in these suburban 

 villages for public recreation and the playing of children as 

 there is in compactly built cities. The great cities are 

 steadily sweeping about them, and soon the whole area 

 will be covered with compactly built business blocks and 

 dwellings. The cost of securing open spaces will then be 

 enormous. Even ordinary forethought suggests that park 

 areas in such places should be secured at once. Wherever 

 there is such a village there is room for a Linnean Club. 



A description of the new Grant monument in Lincoln 

 Park, at Chicago, recently published in the American 

 Architect and Building Neivs, well illustrates the importance 

 of carefully considering the site and the architectural base 

 if a statue is to produce a good effect. As a rule, our 

 statues are injured by bases of insufficient size and dig- 

 ■ . nity, but in this instance the designers seem to have fallen 

 into the opposite error. "The Grant statue," says the 

 writer, " is situated at the eastern side of Lincoln Park, 

 close to the great lake. There has been partially com- 

 pleted this year, outside of what was formerly known as 

 the Lake-shore Drive, a road with water on each side, the 

 actual lake 011 the east and a stretch of smooth water 

 on the west. In passing, it may be mentioned that this 

 drive is a most wonderful piece of masonry, stretching, as 

 it will, for over a mile, with a stone esplanade on the side 

 toward the lake and a paved beach beyond sloping to the 

 Avater's edge. It is from this walk and drive that the most 

 comprehensive view of the monument may be obtained, 

 and a slight feeling of disappointment is felt at the insig- 

 nificance of the bronze compared with the stone. Viewed 

 still closer from the old Lake-shore Drive, where the details 

 of the substructure can be noted, the feeling of disappoint- 

 ment increases, and one is sure that the horse and rider 

 lack that one kindling spark of genius that would lift them 

 above mediocrity." However, the writer continues, when 

 one mounts nearer yet on the road that leads over part of 

 the substructure it is seen that there is "a spirit and 

 strength in the handling of both horse and rider that one 

 would never guess at in viewing the work as a whole," and 

 he decides that the work of the sculptor, Mr. Rebisso, de- 

 serves high praise. "The entire trouble," he explains, " is 

 with the substructure, which is so enormous that it dwarfs 

 the actual statue. The possibility of obtaining a compara- 

 tively near view of the work makes it undesirable that the 

 handling: should be of the broadest : but at the height that 



it is raised above the spectator at most points, only the 

 strongest work would be effective. Add to this that the 

 belly of the horse and the soles of General Grant's boots 

 were not the parts of the statue, doubtless, that the sculp- 

 tor wished brought into the greatest prominence, and one 

 can easily see that the effect of the work is lessened by the 

 great height of substructure. If one approaches the statue 

 from the back door, so to speak, up a gentle incline, where 

 low trees cover the principal part of the granite-work, the 

 fine effect of the horse and rider will immediately prove to 

 the even careless observer how much the too extensive 

 masonry detracts from the work of the sculptor, especially 

 when the masonry be of such a crude and harsh character." 

 A large photograph of the monument, subsequently pub- 

 lished in the same journal, confirms its correspondent's 

 words. It shows a stone bridge, with a single round arch 

 which appears to span a lower road, while the main road 

 that it bears is conducted beneath a structure which is more 

 properly to be called a building than a pedestal. With a 

 large round arch at either end and an arcade of five on the 

 longer face, its exact character is hard to explain. As a 

 building it seems to have no special purpose ; as a substruc- 

 ture for the statue it is utterly inappropriate. It is encir- 

 cled by a sort of balustrade, and from the centre of its top 

 rises the true pedestal, bearing the statue so far above the 

 eye that one can well believe it may be a better work 

 than it thus appears to be. Moreover, the whole construc- 

 tion is not only " crude and harsh " in the character of its 

 masonry, but rude and barbaric in design. It exhibits 

 that unfortunate tendency to which we called attention a 

 few weeks ago — the tendency to mistake excessive mas- 

 siveness for strength, heaviness for dignity, lack of refine- 

 ment for simplicity. We suppose it would be called a 

 Romanesque design. But no Romanesque builder in any 

 community which had really preserved a memory of 

 Roman civilization, or had evolved from the ruins of this 

 a new civilization of its own, would have designed in such 

 a manner a civic construction the purpose of which was 

 professedly ornamental.- These enormous, rough-faced 

 stones ; these clumsy angle-shafts ; these ponderous arches 

 springing from imposts that are mere rude blocks ; these 

 primitive attempts at cornice and balustrade, look like the 

 creations of some rustic builder in a land and age when 

 art was but a memory or a prophecy, when refinement 

 was unknown, when manual skill was at as low an ebb 

 as the power of skillful designing. As a feature in the 

 pleasure-ground of a civilized, nineteenth-century town 

 the cyclopean rudeness of the structure must equally dis- 

 turb the mind and the eye, while nothing more inappro- 

 priate in size and character could be imagined as a 

 support for the statue of a modern man. When we add 

 that this work actually prevents the spectator from taking 

 any point of view from where the statue can be well seen, 

 we must conclude that the art of placing monuments in 

 the open air is not yet universally understood in America. 



The Shrubbery in November. 



IT is now the middle of November, and our deciduous trees 

 are all bare except the Birches, Beeches and the Oaks, and 

 the foliage of these last has lost its brilliancy of tint, and they 

 are settling down into the sober sadness of their brown and 

 russet winter garb. The Birches still have a sparse covering 

 for their upper branches, and the lower limbs of the Beeches 

 are clothed, while the upper ones are bare. The brightest 

 green foliage still decks the Plums, and some Robinias retain 

 their summer robes, but much the worse for wear, shrunken, 

 faded, tattered and forlorn. The Purple Fringe, a charming 

 small tree, is now beautiful in full dress of orange ; it is 

 also remarkable for the exquisite soft, pinkish hues of their 

 translucent young leaves in April, and I know of no tree 

 which will give more pleasing variety in a season's growth. 



On descending to the shrubberies I find some Weigelias, 

 Kerrias and Euonymuses still holding green leaves, while For- 

 sythias have a deep plum-colored shading, and the California 

 Privets, which have not shed a leaf, are purpling in striking 

 contrast to a group of Thunberg's Barberries, cheery with 



