PARK AND CC/nCTCRY 
93 
to the architectural beauty of the Columbian hix- 
position? Can we think of it, now that it is past, 
without its esplanades and “Wooded Island,” its 
lagoons and water courses, its fountains and its 
statues? If we cannot do this, can we help admit- 
ting that without these accessories its beauty would 
have been but dimly shown, if indeed there would 
have been beauty there at all? This perfection of 
landscape gardening, this universality of its scope 
that imagination saw the possibility of in miniature, 
charmed the eyes of millions. 
This art of landscape gardening, which should 
be encouraged by the wealthy and studied and 
practiced by the architectural profession, is of the 
utmost aid in obtaining noble architectural effects, 
and is, whether ranked so or not, above all the arts 
for its capacity in being able in proper harmony 
and design to enhance to the eye the appearance 
and value of a building. It is greatly educational, 
and consequently more beneficial than the results 
of the skill and genius of the artist, because while 
they are appreciated only by the profession, the 
work of the landscape gardener is a living picture 
made of nature’s own materials adorned with its 
ever-varying beauties of hues and tints as unlimit- 
ed as the variety and diversity of tree forms, shrubs, 
ferns and grasses, and it is susceptible to the com- 
prehension of all and so is an art preeminently that 
refines the mind and gratifies that innate longing 
which most of us have for the beautiful. 
As I have before expressed that the landscape 
gardener should be an architect, I must assert now 
that no landscape can be properly taken advantage 
of or modified, that no landscape gardening can be 
rightly done without a knowledge of architecture, 
for how can one make a landscape harmonize with 
the building and vice versa, if he lack the know- 
ledge of architecture? Landscape gardening also 
requires no slight acquaintance with engineering, 
because a practical knowledge of the use of mater- 
ials will be required, as also that of leveling, de- 
pressing or raising the grounds; but an engineer 
alone, or an architect who is only such, will treat 
landscape gardening from no other view than that 
of the profession, and one who is a gardener mere- 
ly, no matter how skilllul he may be in the culti- 
vation of plants and flowers, will have the aim only 
to display them, and it will follow that congruity 
and simplicity in all these cases will give way to 
novelty and picturesque effects, which are two 
qualities only of landscape gardening. Intricacy is 
to be studied in the laying out of the grounds, and 
it must have the quality of variety. Simplicity 
must contrast with grandeur; novelty must give it 
animation; association must endear it, and all must 
be bound in continuity. These effects can be best 
achieved if the landscape requirement'^ be studied 
before the planning of the building is definitely 
made, but they can very seldom be attained, and if 
so, in a modified form only, if the structure is erect- 
ed and the grounds considered afterward. * * * Of 
course, in all this there is more to be studied than 
the immediately contiguous scenery; the character- 
istics of the ground and the neighboring scenery 
must be taken into consideration; the character of 
the soil, and, too, to arrange the relative positions 
of the different buildings. Drainage, also, must be 
taken into account. Collaterally to landscape gard- 
ening the finest views for the different rooms are to 
be studied, and by so doing avoid the frequent case 
of presenting the worst views from the best rooms 
of the house, and vice versa. A little thought in 
this matter will so arrange that natural or artificial 
beauties shall be seen from other rooms than those 
which are reserved for very indifferent purposes. 
* * * As much as I have in the beginning of my 
address berated that very useful quality, utility, it 
must be considered in the long run. Ll^nder the 
head of utility may be mentioned that were the 
landscape gardener consulted in the first place the 
money paid for his services would be no small part 
of the saving effected, for, taking advantage of the 
conformation of the grounds, he avoids expensive 
so-called improvements. 
What is the occasion of the rectangularity of 
our towns, so rectangular that a curve would seem 
to be an offense? Surveyors lay out our towns and 
villages in checker-board fashion. Streets are pro- 
jected in impossible places, building lots are often 
inaccessible, and drainage is bad, making necessary 
an ant-like process or excessive expense to cut down 
the natural hills. These evils seem never to be at 
first noticed, or, if they are, they are not considered, 
because shortsightedness, under the name of utility, 
wishing to make the greatest number of lots, does 
not see that were the natural advantages of the 
ground considered our towns would be better in all 
respects instead of being ugly for all time. There 
is a possibility, though, that these matters may be 
more generally observed, and that the future holds 
out some hope, for, as fast as we have developed 
it, the whole country is not yet quite subdivided. 
Franklin Park, Boston. 
Parks, like individuals, possess distinct charac- 
teristics and why should they not, since every park 
bears the imprint of individual hand, and the com- 
paratively new parks in and about Boston are pro- 
nouncedly marked in this special phase. Franklin 
Park has deviated but little from the plans set down 
by F. L. Olmsted, Landscape Architect, a dozen 
years or more ago. The Arnold Arboretum is dis- 
