the boy who sits in front of him stand on end with philosophy! The poets have been singing about Atlantis for ages; but we shouldn't have been groaning in it to-day, with our Irish servants and our politicians, if Columbus hadn't been a practical man, and taken that first step that has cost us all so much.

We pass over a hundred illustrations, one as bad as another, for we are riding to the Central Park in a New York hack, at as many dollars as the driver may please, an hour, and the sooner we can get there the better. We were thinking of landscape-gardening; and how much has been said and sung about it, first and last, in this country; and how in this, as in other things, the beginning of any knowledge on the subject worth having has come from setting in earnest about a piece of landscape-gardening, and seeing how our theories look in the light of practice.

The Central Park was to be a piece of landscape-gardening proper, in distinction from those cemeteries and "commons" about which we have spoken, that had hitherto been the only places where experiment in the art could be tried with us.

Landscape-gardening is an art for pure pleasure, and however beautiful a Mount Auburn or a Laurel Hill might be made with winding walks, and trees and flowers and quiet pools, it could not be a place where one would go to shake off sad thoughts, or escape from

the company of care. Cemeteries are good schools, and Death reads us many a tender, many a stern lesson from these marble pulpits; but a garden is no less a school, and such places of recreation are necessary in every great city for health of body and mind. We would have them, if we could, free from everything that could distract the eye from the contemplation of nature, no less from architecture and statuary than from graves and monuments. We confess it-our own liking is for vast stretches of grass, with trees in plenty, and, if possible, a winding water. Hyde Park and the Fairmount Park are our models in this matter, and we wish our grandchildren joy of the Park they will see when the city is fairly planted in Westchester County, and their babies are giving the city-swans indigestion by feeding them with sugar-plums as they paddle about in the shallows of the Nepperhan. There will be a Park worth the having! and part of our patience with the mania for putting statues of anybody and everybody in the Central Park comes from our hope that the stock may be used up by the time we are ready to lay out our new acres, and that we shall not be moved to sudden wrath and feeling like breaking things as we turn sharp corners and come upon the Morses and Scotts and Elias Howes of the future.

Still, we must take things as we find them,

and it would argue a sour disposition not to be grateful, and very grateful, too, for the Central Park as it is; and if we allow ourselves to get too much riled sometimes at the monsters in the way of statues that have been let in, we are at least thankful for the two or three that are by no means monsters, and thankful, also, that the Commissioners have been as discouraging to the Fine Arts as they have been. Think of that saddest of words, "it might have been," and how we should all have felt if, in addition to the measly Morse, the squatty Scott, and the horrid Howe, we had been obliged to make long detours in order to avoid the works of Vinnie Ream, or Clark Mills, or Horatio Stone, or the nameless author of the "Franklin" in PrintingHouse Square! At present, one soon learns what paths to avoid, if he would not have his æsthetic sensibilities hurt; but if the pressure on the Commissioners shall continue, we may fear their heroism won't be equal to the task of suppression, and that guys in bronze and marble will abound.

It ought to be understood, however, that the Commissioners of the Central Park are not really responsible for every work of art that gets a place in the ground of which they have the nominal charge. Literally, we suppose their authority extends to saying absolutely that such an abortion as the Scott statue shall not be set up in the Park; but they must be more than men, and more than New Yorkers, if they can face the wrath that would follow their refusal put into action. In all such matters, a body of directors or commissioners must feel the public behind them in order to effect anything useful. We may give our Commissioners too much credit if we take it for granted that they all know how bad the "Scott" is, or the "Morse," or the "Elias Howe," or the "Tigress with her Cubs;" but some of them do, and these could give reasons that might convince the rest. Supposing them all convinced, however, you have still to convince the public, and this is a harder task. For, the public is only halfeducated in matters of taste, and not only admires these very bad figures, but is continually pestering the Commissioners to put up more like them. We have no manner of doubt that the Commissioners have done all they could have been reasonably expected to do in hindering the setting up of statues in the Park. But they are often put in positions where they are not free to act. No great harm is done by accepting from a private individual such a gift as the statue of Commerce, which stands near the en

trance-gate at Eighth avenue and Fiftyninth street, because it may be tucked away anywhere; and so with the "Tigress and her Cubs," and the "Eagles bringing food to their Young," which will find a good place somewhere about the new Natural History Museum, if the live animals do not object to the indifferent drawing of the bronze ones. But the case is different with such statues as the "Scott," the "Morse" and the "Howe." It is true, we do not think the donors of the "Scott" did a thing very creditable to their taste when they fobbed us off with a copy of the Edinburgh statue, which everybody out of Edinburgh has been laughing at or angry. over ever since it was put under the clumsy canopy that fortunately makes it difficult to see it. It was a cheap way of honoring their greatest man but one, and though no one can dispute their right to put up what they please in the Athens of the North, we think they might have done a more graceful thing than to put us off with second-hand goods of poor quality. If we had never seen the "Morse" nor the "Howe" nor the "Greek Slave," nor the greater number of the Capitol statues, nor Dr. Rimmer's "Hamilton," nor Powers's "Webster," nor Dr. Stone's "Hamilton," nor Vinnie Reams's "Lincoln," nor Randolph