io6 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY 



Downing was a man of catholic views, but while he realized the fact that vases and balus- 

 trades and studied symmetry might be mingled with foliage enough to make a garden, 

 yet his ideal garden scene was the primeval Paradise, whose prevading beauty was found 

 in the unstudied simplicity of nature. With his natural taste refined by travel and study, 

 Downing's treatise on the 'Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening,' which was 

 published in 1841, became at once the accepted text-book of rural art in this country, and 

 this book, passing through many editions, and his 'Rural Essays' and other works, are still 

 classics in this branch of literature. It was his example and precept which inspired such 

 men as Henry Winthrop Sargent, and they, in turn, kindled the enthusiasm of younger 

 men, so that the best private gardens in America today owe what is best in them to his 

 sound teachings. 



"Downing was a graceful and forceful writer as well as an artist of the highest intelli- 

 gence, and, as he had been already recognized as an authority, a timely series of letters which 

 he wrote in 1849 for 'The Horticulturist' on the subject of public parks, had a marked 

 influence in creating and molding popular sentiment in this direction. These essays, which 

 appeared month after month, and were widely copied by the press, marshaled in a con- 

 vincing way the arguments which were then fresh and original, although many of them have 

 since become a part of our common knowledge and belief. He began by showing that public 

 parks were needed, not only to educate the public taste but because everybody at some time 

 felt the necessity for this contact with nature. He showed that this communion was not only 

 a delight to people who were as unsophisticated as children, but that the more thoughtful 

 and educated a community became, the stronger grew the passion for rural pleasures. When 

 it was argued that the people would not visit parks, even if artistic ones were constructed, 

 he pointed to the large cemeteries to prove how eager all classes were to avail themselves 

 of an opportunity for a visit to anything resembling a park. Mount Auburn, Greenwood, 

 and Laurel Hill had been already established for a quarter of a century, and that they had 

 come to be places of resort was certainly not because they afforded opportunity for solemn 

 meditation nor for the artistic value of the monuments reared within them. He truly argued 

 that it was because they contained bits of forest-land, hills and dales, copses and glades, 

 that they attracted throngs of visitors in cities which possessed no great public gardens, 

 and that if thirty thousand people would visit Laurel Hill in one year, many times that 

 number would visit a public park in a city like Philadelphia. He set his argument on the 

 highest plane at the very outset, and, while recognizing the use of parks as helping to 

 furnish air and sunshine, he held that the fostering of the love .of rural beauty was quite 

 as important an end, and that such a love of nature helped to civilize and refine national 

 character. Mayor Kingsland's proposed park of a hundred and sixty acres he pronounced 

 altogether too scant, and argued that five hundred acres between 39th Street and 

 the Harlem River was the smallest space that should be reserved for the wants of the 

 city, since no area less than this could furnish a rural landscape or offer space enough for 

 broad reaches of parkland with a real feeling of the breadth and beauty of green fields, 

 and the perfume and freshness of nature. It was argued by some who assumed to represent 

 the laboring classes that the park would be monopolized by those who ride in their carriages, 

 and, on the other hand, some of the wealthy and refined people of the city complained 

 that a park would certainly be usurped by rowdies and low people. It is refreshing now to 

 read Downing's replies to such objections. He stoutly asserted that these social horrors 

 were nothing but phantoms of the imagination; his faith was, as the event has proved, 



