13 



make its improvement very expensive, and when the besl possible 

 had been done, it would always present a cramped, contracted and 

 unsatisfactory appearance. For these reasons, we think it our dutj 



to advise, that so much of the site as lies easl of Flatbush avenue 



should be abandoned for park purposes. 



The great reduction which we have thus suggested in the dimen 

 sions of the park site, as originally provided, would oblige you 

 either to he content with a much smaller park than has hitherto 

 been contemplated, or to determine on an extension of its original 

 boundaries in some other direction. 



As the number and value of the health and pleasure giving cir- 

 cumstances possihle in any park must of course be limited by its 

 size, the question of size may be thought to depend on the restric- 

 tions fixed in regard to the number of these circumstances; and it 

 may perhaps be thought, that a large park has advantages over a 

 small one only in the greater number and the greater variety, of 

 the pleasures which it offers. But it would he a serious mis- 

 take to entertain any such idea, as will be evident to any one who 

 will ask himself: Is there any pleasure which all persons find at all 

 times in every park, and if so, what does that pleasure depend upon ? 



The answer unquestionably must be— That there is such a pleasure, 

 common, constant and universal to all parks, and that it results from 

 the feeling of relief experienced by those entering them, on escaping 

 from the cramped, confined and controlling circumstances of the 

 streets of the town ; in other words, a sense of enlarged freedom is 

 to all, at all times, the most certain and the most valuable gratifica- 

 tion afforded by a park. The scenery which favors this gratifica- 

 tion is, therefore, more desirable to be secured than any other, and 

 the various topographical conditions and circumstances of a site thus, 

 in reality, become important very much in the proportion by which 

 they give the means of increasing the general impression of unde- 

 fined limit. The degree of this impression, which will be found in 

 any particular park, must unquestionably depend very much upon 

 the manner in which it is laid out ; that is to say. on the manner in 

 which the original topographical conditions are turned to account 

 by the designers; but as no degree of art can make the back yard 

 of a town house seem unlimited, and as no art at all is required to 

 make a prairie of some hundred square miles seem unlimited to a 

 man set down in the midst of it, it is obvious that a certain distance 

 between the points of resort within the park, and its exterior limits. 



