ll have
threaded his way between hillocks and rocks, one after another,
differing in magnitude, but never opening a landscape having breadth or
distance. He ascends a hill and looks northward: the most distant
object is the hard, straight, horizontal line of the stone wall of the
Reservoir, flanked on one side by the peak of Vista Rock. It is a little
over a mile distant,--but, standing clear out against the horizon,
appears much less than that. Hide it with foliage, as well as the houses
right and left, and the limitation of distance is a mile in front and a
quarter of a mile upon each side. Low hills or ridges of rock in a great
degree cut off the intermediate ground from view: cross these, and the
same unassociated succession of objects might be visited, but no one of
them would have engaged the visitor's attention and attracted him onward
from a distance. The plan has evidently been to make a selection of
the natural features to form the leading ideas of the new scenery, to
magnify the most important quality of each of these, and to remove or
tone down all the irregularities of the ground between them, and by all
means to make the limit of vision undefined and obscure. Thus, in the
central portion of the Lower Park the low grounds have been generally
filled, and the high grounds reduced; but the two largest areas of low
ground have been excavated, the excavation being carried laterally into
the hills as far as was possible, without extravagant removal of rock,
and the earth obtained transferred to higher ground connecting hillocks
with hills. Excavations have also been made about the base of all the
more remarkable ledges and peaks of rock, while additional material has
been conveyed to their sides and summits to increase their size and
dignity.

This general rule of the plan was calculated to give, in the first
place, breadth, and, in the second, emphasis, to any general prospect
of the Park. A want of unity, or rather, if we may use the word, of
assemblage, belonged to the ground; and it must have been one of the
first problems to establish some one conspicuous, salient idea which
should take the lead in the composition, and about which all minor
features should seem naturally to group as accessories. The straight,
evidently artificial, and hence distinctive and notable, Mall, with its
terminating Terrace, was the resolution of this problem. It will be,
when the trees are fully grown, a feature of the requisite im