Park

“ It is already peering over the tops of the low hemlocks that fringe the park. A silvery exhalation fills the terrace, the groups of trees, all the landscape, as far as the eye can reach; in the distance it gradually fades away, like trembling waters. ”

“ The real extent of the park is small, but the walks are so ingeniously arranged, and the trees are so luxuriant and various, that it takes weeks to learn the turnings and windings by heart, so as no longer to have the sense of novelty. In the warm weather our great delight was the walk which follows the course of the Ilm, and is overarched by tall trees with patches of dark moss on their trunks, in rich contrast with the transparent green of the delicate leaves, through which the golden sunlight played, and checkered the walk before us. ”

“ That uninteresting park, uninteresting in itself, has a gift of refreshment, as one turns into it out of the streets. I find myself leaning against the railing to watch a little dark creature with red legs and a red bill, that swims between the swans, and clambers up on the grass, and runs about there stealthily with a shy grace. ”

“ And now we cross the hill to pay a morning visit to the family at the great house,—another fine place, commanding another fine sweep of country. The park, studded with old trees, and sinking gently into a valley, rich in wood and water, is in the best style of ornamental landscape, though more according to the common routine of gentlemen's seats than the singularly original place which we have just left. ”

“ Through the length of the park a pathway traverses the winding summits of the gray limestone rocks, which—clothed with wood, or rising in naked spires from the water far into the sky—afforded resting-places for occasional nightingales, and for all the commoner singing birds of the land, as well as for ravens and innumerable daws. Here she could find romantic spots at every turn that called forth all her poetical aspirations and faculties, and filled her imagination with dreams of the heroes of old Wales, and the stormy warfare of the Marches in the middle ages. ”

“ No park is too small to have its ducks and swans with unlimited capacity for bread-crumbs, its band-stand, its open-air restaurant where drinks are served and you bring your own food, and its place without grass where you can stretch your own tennis-net between trees. ”

“ A closed and shuttered Park by night, with wide and empty roads laid across it like the arms of a sprawling skeleton, is a most abominable thing; there is no beauty in it thus, no mystery, and sensitive eyes must reject its dark and dank attractions through the railings. ”

“ For instance, as you pass into the Park, seeking the spot we have described, turn back before you have advanced far, and see the great cliff wall going up beyond the slender tracery of young trees, with the street lights, just turned on, making a level strip of golden shimmer at its base, curiously suggestive of crowds and gaiety. There is at all hours a certain charm to be found in the long line of high hotels and apartment houses which line the Park to the west, when you view them over treetops, rock ledges, and running brooks, or over white fields of snow. ”

“ This short turn brings us to the Park, which is rapidly filling with vehicles of every fashion and color, and with pedestrians and horsemen innumerable. No hackney coach, street-cab, cart, or pauper, is allowed to pass the porters at the several gates: the road is macadamised and watered, and the grass within the ring is fresh and verdant. ”

“ The house and stables and courts are such as they ought to be for the great estate that surrounds them; and the park is everything that is beautiful. On one side of the house, looking over a fine piece of water, you see a distant valley, opening between lofty hills: on another side the ground descends a little at first, then goes gently rising for a while, and then rapidly, to the distance of a mile perhaps, where it is crowned with trees in irregular patches, or groups, single and most magnificent trees being scattered all over the whole of the park ”

“ To see the red wintry sunshine lighting up the misty expanse of the Park, the brisk pedestrians going to and fro under the bare trees, the carriages following each other along the broad road, the coveys of pretty children and neat nursemaids, and all the flood of prosperous life that flows along, leisurely in the morning, crowding in{332} the afternoons, is very pleasant to the uninitiated. ”

“ The park is a great wood on a hill, embedded among meadows and harvests. You walk in long solitary alleys, under colonnades of superb oaks, while to the left the lofty stems of the copses mount in close ranks upon the back of the hill. ”

“ The park is now traversed in every direction with wide, unfinished roads; great open spaces appear at intervals, covered with building materials; yawning sand-quarries swarming with men; great brick-fields smoking in all the reeking oppression of that filthy manufacture ”

“ 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 park, which presents an agreeable and fashionable promenade, is laid out as a large garden with the greatest taste, intersected in every direction by wide and handsome walks, on each side adorned with lofty overshadowing lindens. ”

“ The Park, in front of this palace, which had continued for nearly a century in one state of formal, tasteless insipidity, has been laid out as a large pleasure-garden, interspersed with lawn, clusters of shrubs and flowers, winding walks, varied surface, and a lake, whose margin is made to wind with every inequality of surface, spreading occasionally into a broad expanse, and then contracting to a narrow arm. In the midst of the larger spaces are islands, covered with aquatic trees and shrubs. ”

“ The park with its fragrant shady aisles, its majestic leafy domes, impervious even to the rays of the tropical sun, its huge piles of rock round which clamber the immense roots of gigantic fig-trees, its deliciously cool atmosphere, its soft green velvet paths, its heaps of ruined walls, and its death-like quietness, seems as though destined for the asylum of an exiled poet, who, instead of lamenting his destiny like common men in sullen silence, felt 395his spirit roused amid this wonderful tropical beauty to fresh sublime efforts,—"Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme!" ”

“ 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! ”

“ From the throats of myriad birds comes a sound as of one blended twitter, and a strange, unreal radiance pervades the whole scene. With the rapidly increasing daylight definiteness ensues, and railings, benches, roadway, and other details of the Park add strength to the picture. ”

“ But what again greatly compensates for the mediocrity of this park, is the astonishing number of people who, towards evening in fine weather, resort here; our finest walks are never so full even in the midst of summer. The exquisite pleasure of mixing freely with such a concourse of people, who are for the most part well-dressed and handsome, I have experienced this evening for the first time.
Before I went to the park I took another walk with my little Jacky, which did not cost me much fatigue and yet was most uncommonly interesting. ”

“ And when the day is done and twilight falls we shall land at the loveliest place of all. I know it well. It is an old, old park garden, thick planted with many great solemn trees. A private park, but lonely, for the house is haunted, so they say. ”

“ The park which surrounds the house, is large and beautiful; and the patients may wander undisturbed in its many alleys, enjoy the beauty of the country, and rest on the benches under the trees. The flowers were a real luxury here, and on all hands one met with agreeable objects, with the exception, of course, of the poor lunatics themselves. ”

“ I see around me all that is bright and beautiful in nature: verdant turf, trees, flowers, all that we take such pains to plant or cultivate; and such, too, as we never succeed in equalling. There seems nothing wanting to make this picture complete—’tis a park perfect in everything! ”

“ The park has indeed its larger lines, its broad open sweep, and gradual slope, to which the eye accustomed to small inclosures requires time to adjust itself. These left to themselves are beautiful; they are the surface of the earth, which is always true to itself and needs no banks nor artificial hollows. ”

“ The hills and depressions covered with buildings are plainly defined, the bright, sunlit colouring forced into strong effect by the scattered trees and palms. To the gate of the park is quite a country walk, with broad acres of fertile, tilled soil rolling northward, and a few windmills in sight. ”

“ When we took our first walk in the promenade, improperly called the Park, we were fascinated with the extreme beauty of this charmed grove, which is planted in terraces, on a cóteau bordering the Gave, and is one of the most charming possessed by any town in France: there is the same glorious view of the range of giant mountains even more developed than from the Place Royale ”

“ The park is conveniently reached by a daily stage-line, which travels over a good road and, with the exception of a few miles of level plains, traverses a picturesque region, with mountains sweeping every side, the monotony of which is relieved by many lakes, thirty-five of which may be seen from a single station, scattered over the plain and bathing the foot-hills. ”

“ Each Park is thus a wild-life paradise where the animals are safe, free from the fear of being killed by man. These Parks are ideal places in which to enjoy the animals and to study their character; and they are a happy hunting-ground for the hunter who carries the camera. Recreation in these wonderlands is thus absolutely separated from the butchering business. ”

“ This beauty is never displayed naked, but always sufficiently veiled to leave the requisite play for the imagination: for a perfect park,—in other words, a tract of country idealized by art,—should be like a good book, which suggests at least as many new thoughts and feelings as it expresses. ”

“ Aside from the luxuriance of the woodland vegetation there is the added charm of seclusion to a degree rarely found in a public park. The steepness of the sides of the ravine and the narrowness of its bottom make it available for a comparatively small number of visitors at a time. One narrow walk or trail, perhaps dividing and reuniting at difficult places, is all that should ever be attempted as a way along or near the brook. A drive there would be ruinous to its natural beauty. ”

“ A five minutes' walk leads us up a rocky precipice into a large park, partly planted with firs, and partly open, which overlooks the town and all the country round, and gives a view of the windings of the Clyde for a great way. ”

“ There are 1040 acres here of as fine a park as there is anywhere under the sun, and when we consider that 25 years ago this was all a barren tract of drifting sand hills, that everything you see growing has been planted and is kept alive and green and blooming by a regular and almost constant application of water, when you remember this, then you will feel and think that this park is a little different from any other that you have seen. ”

“ A walled park, with drives, shrubbery, trees, and flowers, well kept, it is one of the loveliest of its sort I have seen. It will be a new and improved era when all our cities have such pretty drives and gardens. ”

“ That they have some high-fenced grove, which they call a park; that they live in larger and better-garnished saloons than he has visited, and go in coaches, keeping only the society of the elegant, to watering-places, and to distant cities, are the groundwork from which he has delineated estates of romance, compared with which their actual possessions are shanties and paddocks. ”

“ The tendency of all these fellings is on the one hand to turn over London forest into a park, which would be more or less like other parks, and on the other hand to grow sizable trees, as if for the timber market. ”

“ Unfortunately it seems to happen very often that a park is first improved mainly with a view to providing the beauties of landscape and afterwards has sprinkled over it every sort of thing which people are believed to admire. ”

“ The place is a fine playground, with its soft, grassy carpet, and noble old trees. It is the sort of park which adjoins country houses of wealthy old English families, where years of training have brought to perfection the trees planted by previous generations. ”