Art Out-of-Doors 
Among all our parks Central Park is the 
most interesting and instructive. One or 
two others may be counted more beautiful, 
but this is because their sites were much 
more advantageous. The difficulties which 
attended the formation of Central Park give 
it its peculiar value. No harder task than 
the creation of a big pleasure-ground in the 
centre of the Island of Manhattan can ever 
be suggested to a landscape-gardener ; and, 
therefore, when its success is appraised, it 
teaches, like the Chicago Fair-grounds, the 
important lesson : Never despair. More- 
over, while the broken, rocky character 
of its surface offered comparatively little 
chance for such wide and stately effects 
as delight us in Prospect Park, in Frank- 
lin Park, and in the South Park at Chi- 
cago, it was extremely favorable (given an 
extremely able artist) to the production of 
varied beauty in details. So this park 
shows, in a striking way, how broad beauty 
may be compassed under seemingly deter- 
rent conditions, and at the same time of- 
fers an unusual assortment of those smaller 
beauties which are all that the landscape- 
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