Limmeridge Park

“ And these half naked forms, crouching in the doorway of yonder unfinished edifice,—huddling together in their rags, and vainly endeavoring to keep out the winter's cold. Children,—friendless, orphaned children. All day long they roam the streets in search of bread, and at night they sleep together in this luxurious style.
But we have arrived at the Astor and the Park stretches before us, the wind moaning among its leafless trees, and its lights glimmering in a sort of mournful radiance through the gloom. ”

“ The grounds stretch for a mile or more along Richmond Park, from which they are separated only by a wire fence; the trees are magnificent, the growth of centuries, and among them are enormous hickories, acacias, and tulip-trees; while horse-chestnuts without number make a very blaze of floral illumination through the leafy month of June. Richmond-hill, with its unrivalled views, rises from Sudbrook Park; and that eerie-looking Ham House, the very ideal of the old English manor-house, with its noble avenues which make twilight walks all the summer day, is within a quarter of a mile. ”

“ Children leaped forward, and old people unconsciously assumed a lightsome vigour.
The Park rose in terraces from the railway station to a street of small villas almost on the ridge of the hill. From its gilded gates to its smallest geranium-slips it was brand-new, and most of it was red. The keeper's house, the bandstand, the kiosks, the balustrades, the shelters—all these assailed the eye with a uniform redness of brick and tile which nullified the pallid greens of the turf and the frail trees. ”

“ Next to its fine position on a very beautiful reach of the Thames, the chief glory of Richmond—a glory shared, however, by five other parishes, Petersham, Ham, Kingston, Putney, and Mortlake—is its noble park, known as the New or Great Park, to distinguish it from the one that was connected with the palace. It comprises two thousand acres of charming undulating scenery, grand oak woods and plantations of other trees alternating with fern-clad dells and dales, in the midst of which are the picturesque Pen Ponds, so called because they are near the enclosures for the deer. ”

“ Limerick is a fine hunting country, and gives excellent sport. There were many good riders in those days. Our friend the Sub-Sheriff was one, but perhaps the best man there was the owner of Ballynegarde, at whose hospitable house we spent many happy days. He must have ridden quite over sixteen stone, and I well remember seeing him, on a chestnut horse, clear the wall which surrounded the park, the chestnut changing his feet on the top, just like a cat. Good horses were just as expensive in those days as they were before the war, but we subalterns did not buy expensive horses ”

“ Wild and beautiful, no doubt, was the Hyde Park of Queen Anne, but it was not the luxurious garden that we now know. Let us obliterate for a moment from our mind’s eye the well-kept grounds of our favourite resort, with the waters of the Serpentine sparkling in the sun, and replace them by thickets and brushwood growing on marshy ground, here and there stagnant pools, with the pungent smell that ever pervades any tract of swampy forest-land ”

“ The broad green slopes and expanses of Lyme Park, though they partake of the loneliness of the neighbouring moors, are, as indicated above, pleasant at every season of the year. Nature, in truth, is always good, no matter what the season is, if the people are so who seek it. As we traverse them, in the south–west the eye rests upon the great plain that stretches to Bowdon; upon the left, on a swelling height, is the far–seen square grey tower called Lyme Cage, clearly intended, when built, for a huntsman’s refuge ”

“ Moving onwards along the brow of the eminence, and passing the well known but expensive hotel called the Star and Garter, we enter the famous Richmond Park, which is eight miles in circumference, and enriched with magnificent trees. These extensive grounds were at one time connected with a royal palace, but there is now no such edifice—one or two hunting-lodges excepted; the park is, however, still a domain of the Crown, and freely open to the public. Foreigners are great admirers of this vicinity. ”

“ As the Kew Gardens flourished, those of Richmond had withered away. The royal pleasure-grounds on that side were turned into George III.’s model farm, then into a park, which has become a golf-course and a recreation-ground, though it was only the other day that its quasi-public character came to be fully recognised by a foot-bridge thrown over the muddy moat cutting off this enclosure from the river-bank. ”

“ When at last the park comes to an end, a deep lane breaks off from the main road, and pretending that it is going nowhere in particular and that time would be lost in following it, edges along like a homing cat beside the park wall in the direction of Riff, skirting a gate and a cluster of buildings, laiterie, barn and dovecot, which are all you can see of Red Riff Farm from the lane. ”

“ A fountain, with immense granite basins, and a colossal statue of the Angel of Bethesda, stands between the terrace and the lake. Beyond the lake is the Ramble, consisting of winding, shaded paths, and covering thirty-six acres of sloping hills. From the tower at Belvidere, a magnificent piece of architecture, in the Norman style, may be obtained a fine bird's-eye view of the Park. Just above Belvidere are the two reservoirs of the water works, extending as far north as Ninety-sixth street. Beyond that the Park is less embellished by art, and is richer in natural beauties. ”

“ FRIEND AND EXECUTOR In the capital of Lucifram there is a great park—a city park—planted with trees sown centuries since by the restless winds, when all was peaceful country. To the right stretches the city—work and pleasure, laughter and tears, and perpetual hurry-scurry. All round the park sounds and sights of human life, condensed within a curiously small circle, were in evidence. ”

“ The parks of London have been described so very often that we must pass them with brief allusion. Their vast extent is what first strikes the American visitor with astonishment, especially those who have moulded their ideas after Boston Common, or even Central Park of New York. Hyde Park, in London, contains three hundred and ninety acres; and we took a lounge in Rotten Row at the fashionable hour, between five and six in the afternoon, when the drive was crowded with stylish equipages; some with coroneted panels and liveried footmen, just such as we see in pictures. ”

“ The stretching landscape into smoke decays.
Richmond Park is nearly nine miles in circuit, at its Robin Hood Gate almost adjoining the wilder expanse of Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common. It is a royal demesne, but by degrees, one of them a “village Hampden” lawsuit, it has come to be treated as a public pleasure-ground. Quite recently King Edward crowned former concessions by giving up game-preserving in the many thickets that shade its swards, stocked with herds of not too shy deer. In a central hollow are ponds that serve for skating. ”

“ The lane inclined gently leftward, and presently, as I had anticipated, I came upon a lodge, overgrown with ivy and but partly visible beyond the gates which barred the end of the drive.
That this was the entrance to Friar's Park I felt assured, but I had no intention of seeking admittance in the usual way. Pursuing a high wall, evidently of great age, which divided the grounds from the road, I walked on for fully three hundred yards. ”

“ Lippincott, the great American publisher, and Rosengarten to breakfast, then a visit from Morrison’s friend Welsh, reproachful that we had not occupied his house, and full of interesting stories of the Indian commission, of which he is the moving spirit. Then more schools, workmen’s houses, etc., with Rosengarten, and a drive in the park, five miles long on both sides of the river Schuylkill (as broad as the Thames at Putney) , and with views combining Richmond Hill and Oxford. The Central Park is nothing to it, or any other I ever saw on heard of. ”

“ A characteristic feature of the system is the large number of small “People’s Parks” scattered through the poorer districts and provided with baths, gymnasiums and playgrounds. On the north side is Lincoln Park, reached via Lake Shore Drive, one of the finest residence streets in Chicago, containing some very handsome houses. This passes near the Water Works, at the foot of Chicago Avenue, and ends on the north at Lincoln Park, which is at present three hundred acres in area, but is being extended by filling in the adjacent shallows of Lake Michigan. ”

“ The park did it, exactly as the managers of the Juvenile Asylum appealed to the sense of honor in their prisoners. It appealed with its trees and its grass and its birds to the sense of decency and of beauty, undeveloped but not smothered, in the children, and the whole neighborhood responded. One can go around the whole square that covers two big blocks, nowadays, and not come upon a single fight. I should like to see anyone walk that distance in Mulberry Street without running across half a dozen. ”

“ The Mulberry Bend Park kept its promise. Before the sod was laid in it two more were under way in the thickest of the tenement house crowding, and each, under the law which brought them into existence, is to be laid out in part as a playground. They are not yet finished, but they will be; for the people have taken to the idea, and the politician has made a note of the fact. He saw a great light when the play piers were opened. In half a dozen localities where the slum was striking its roots deep into the soil such piers are now being built, and land is being acquired for small parks. ”

“ Lyme Park was originally included within the bounds of the royal forest of Macclesfield—a vast tract of country that comprised little of wood and much of wilderness—and so continued until the time of Richard II., when it was granted to an ancestor of its present owner. Common report says there was a house here as early as the reign of King John, but the story is unsupported by any existing evidence; if there were a dwelling at all it could only have been a kind of hunting lodge. ”

“ LINCOLN PARK, on Puget Sound, bounded on the east and north by W. Fontanelle St. and Fauntleroy Ave., is a wooded 107-acre salt-water recreational area, the best-equipped in the city for family picnics, and generously supplied with fire grates, tables, and sheltered retreats. There is profusion of wild flowers of many species, and sloping green lawns afford a restful retreat. The park is maintained by the Seattle Park Board and all accommodations are free of charge. ”

“ Standing right in the heart of London, it is almost the only surviving out-of-door public pleasure resort left in the West-End, wherein fashion may display itself and take exercise, since St. James’s Park has now no social life, and Spring Gardens, Vauxhall, Old Ranelagh, and Cremorne are long since dead. ”

“ It is to be regretted that the necessity for general plans in parks is not appreciated by most people as is the necessity for a general plan for city hall or court house. Yet a park is apt to include more naturally incongruous purposes and objects than a city hall. ”

“ James's Park is associated in contemporary minds with nothing but amusing recollections of bands of music, marching soldiers, maid-servants and children, drinkings of "milk from the cow," the hoop-petticoats of the court days of George the Third, and fading images of passages in novels, or of shabby-genteel debtors sitting lounging on the benches. A little further back in point of time we see a novelist himself, Richardson, walking in it, with other invalids, for his health; then Swift crossing it from Suffolk Street in his way 432 to Chelsea, or thinking of the Spectator and Rosamond's Pond ”

“ If possible to have it there is no more attractive spot in a park than a lily pool. The old idea of laying out parks according to some geometrical pattern is giving way to the development of walk lines of practical use, recognizing both traffic requirements and the desirability of location for numerous park benches. What will lend more charm to a park than a beautiful drive bordered with noble trees leading up to some focal point or opening a way to some particular vista that would otherwise be lost! ”

“ This covers more than two thousand acres, and, thanks to the railway, may almost be regarded as a lung of London, being only eight miles distant from the city. Richmond Park is as replete as Windsor with historical association, and came into especial importance in the reign of Charles I. That king, who was excessively addicted to the sports of the field, had a strong desire to make a great park, for red as well as fallow deer, between Richmond and Hampton Court, where he had large wastes of his own, and great parcels of wood, which made it very fit for the use he designed it for ”

“ With the encroachments of civilization, the demands of those seeking to use the Park for their own selfish ends must in the nature of things steadily increase. Pressure for timber and water privileges, and rights of way for railroad purposes, will constantly arise. The larger part of the timber reservation should become an integral part of the Park, as much of the game, and its best breeding-grounds, lie within this reservation. ”

“ Rumford Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Portrait at Forty-five Years of Age. One of the beneficent acts of Count Rumford was that of establishing a public park, called the English Garden. A neglected tract of forest in the environs of Munich that had been a part of the hunting grounds of the elector was by him converted into a beautiful park surrounded by a drive six miles in circuit. Its lovely lakes, walks, grottos, waterfalls and other charming features, are still alluring to a population fond of living in the open air. ”