tleman, in his
place, offsets at least a thousand square plugs in round holes. He is
precisely the man for the place,--and that is precisely the place for
the man. Among final causes, it would be difficult not to assign the
Central Park as the reason of his existence. To fill the duties of his
office as he has filled them,--to prove himself equally competent as
original designer, patient executor, potent disciplinarian, and model
police-officer,--to enforce a method, precision, and strictness, equally
marked in the workmanship, in the accounts, and in the police of the
Park,--to be equally studious of the highest possible use and enjoyment
of the work by the public of to-day, and of the prospects and privileges
of the coming generations,--to sympathize with the outside people,
while in the closest fellowship with the inside,--to make himself
equally the favorite and friend of the people and of the workmen:
this proves an original adaptation, most carefully improved, which we
seriously believe not capable of being paralleled in any other public
work, of similar magnitude, ever undertaken. The union of prosaic
sense with poetical feeling, of democratic sympathies with refined
and scholarly tastes, of punctilious respect for facts with tender
hospitality for ideas, has enabled him to appreciate and embody, both in
the conception and execution of the Park, the beau-ideal of a people's
pleasure-ground. If he had not borne, as an agriculturist, and as the
keenest, most candid, and instructive of all our writers on the moral
and political economy of our American Slavery, a name to be long
remembered, he might safely trust his reputation to the keeping of New
York city and all her successive citizens, as the author and achiever of
the Central Park,--which, when completed, will prove, we are confident,
the most splendid, satisfactory, and popular park in the world.

Two grand assumptions have controlled the design from the inception.

First, That the Park would be the only park deserving the name, for a
town of twice or thrice the present population of New York; that
this town would be built compactly around it (and in this respect
of centrality it would differ from any extant metropolitan park of
magnitude); and that it would be a town of greater wealth and more
luxurious demands than any now existing.

Second, That, while in harmony with the luxury of the rich, the Park
should and would be used more than any existing park by