162 



PARKS AND PLEAS CRE-GROUNDS. 



youth of botli sexes (it is always well to give loiterers 

 sometMng to do), and bowling-greens should be formed 

 for persons of more advanced years. 



We have already said that water should be employed 

 as an ornament in public parks in all suitable localities, 

 that is, where the town is not built on such a craggy or 

 twisted surface as to preclude the possibility of finding a 

 sufficient extent of level space, or where the ^dcinity of 

 the sea or a broad river does not throw an air of ridicule 

 over the mimic efibrts of the designer. Most of the 

 inland towns and cities of the empire are so situated as 

 to render artificial sheets of water desirable, and accord- 

 ingly they are to be found, we believe, in all the public 

 parks which have been recently constructed. It must be 

 confessed, however, that the very flatness of the localities 

 often renders the successful execution of such works a 

 matter of great difficulty. It would be an easy, but a 

 somewhat invidious, task, to point out certain signal 

 failures in this department of designing. Nearly all the 

 specimens of this kind of waterworks which we have 

 had an opportunity of inspecting are deficient in breadth 

 of efiect; some of them are little better than wide 

 canals, and some are grotesque ponds, which the artist 

 seems to have copied from his own hand, with the fingers 

 spread out as if in astonishment at his own ingenuity. 

 The taste is little exigeant that is satisfied with such 

 things. The small lakes in the Royal Botanic Gardens, 

 Eegent^s Park, by Mr. Marnoch, and those in the 

 Queen^s Park, Liverpool, by Sir Joseph Paxton, may be 

 cited as artificial pieces of water with an inartificial look. 

 It is most needful that the designer, before he attempts 

 this sort of work, should make himself familiar with 

 the outlines and the slopes in the banks of natural lakes. 



