A GLANCE AT FAIRMOUNT PARK.
THE establishment of a public pleasure-ground like that on the Schuylkill is an afterthought of men, who thus seek to recall and lure again around a teeming city those natural beauties which the first advance of an energetic race is prone to destroy.
Indeed, the first progress of any people into a new and undeveloped region cannot but prove, on many accounts, destructive of those harmonies which Nature knows how to produce when left to her undisturbed devices; for the roar of her waterfall is not at variance with the twitter of her tiniest bird, nor the gloom of her deepest abyss with the summit of her sun-lighted hills, nor the mirror-like surface of her lakes with the cloudy promontories reflected there. We find variety indeed, high contrast of color, sound and shape, but no discord until man comes to make it; and then the scene is changed. The pioneer, with stern necessities of subsistence and defence pressing hard upon him, has no disposition to cultivate æsthetic impulses: he feels no need of the splendid forests that may crowd around him—lurking-places, perchance, for dangerous foes—save that he may construct from them dwellings and block-houses and boats; and so down they come before his relentless axe.
Then, first necessities being supplied, in course of years there comes that desire inherent among men to accummulate wealth, and factories arise to taint the water and blacken the air. Soon is heard a clank of engines and a roar of mighty furnaces, till
"Far and near,
Slag and cinder spread year by year.
Never a blade of grass or flower
Stands in the sun or bows in the shower;
Never a robin whistles nigh.
Or a swallow cleaves the grimy sky."
Mines are pushed under ground in search of hidden treasures, and while a region is defaced above, it is perforated below: railroads run out like huge antenna from commercial centres, with every artifice of bridge and tunnel, till the constant shriek of rival locomotives is added to the general turmoil. And so civilization goes on. But at last there comes a reaction. Man, wearied with labor or satiated with wealth, would fain enter again and repose a while in some terrestrial paradise, from which the ever-whirling wheel of traffic has kept him away as effectually as his first parents were shut out of Eden by the revolving sword. He would fain wander in pleasant groves, and delight his eye with agreeable prospects: he would refresh his thirsty palate with unpolluted water, and invigorate his exhausted faculties by affording them brief respite from excitement. So the denizen of the city goes abroad into the fields, if he can find any left, and returns to the wall-lined pavement with regret. In every metropolis throughout the land there is an almost peremptory clamor from the people that there shall be a public pleasure-ground set aside for them—open to all, easy of access, secure from the grasp of the speculator and the touch of the destroyer—set aside for them and their descendants for ever. Fortunately for Philadelphia, it is in her power yet to rescue from desolation a tract of land lying on either side the Schuylkill, above Fairmount, that when completed will give her inhabitants a park scarcely rivaled throughout the world for extent and beauty, and to secure to the growing city an unlimited supply of fresh water as long as the Schuylkill shall flow onward to the sea. The Park Commissioners—gentlemen of character and position, who give their time without pay, and tolerate no waste or corruption in their high trust—are at work now, and the last object—that of supplying such a city with pure, fresh water for ever—would of itself be more than sufficient to justify
