not propose a great park that nobody can
get to, unless he gives a day to it, and a good deal of money: but they
have adopted a system based upon the natural characteristics of the
neighborhood of Boston. And what better could they do? At East Boston,
they have given them a park upon the water-side, where they will always
have the fresh breezes of the sea. At South Boston, they have given them
a park upon the water-side, one directly opposite Fort Independence, and
then another one, called the South Park, larger; and Chester Park, which
you are all familiar with, is already extended, and nearly ready to be
used as far as Beacon Street; and thence it is to go over to Cambridge,
and be the quickest means of access to the University. That same avenue
is to be extended easterly till it strikes the farthest of the South
Boston parks, opposite Fort Independence; and, when that is done, you
will be able to drive or walk, according to your powers of walking, from
the park opposite Fort independence, into the city, and across it, to
Harvard University.

Now that is a good deal; but they have taken another step. They propose
to take the water-front of the Charles River basin; and there is nothing
in Nature so beautiful, so well adapted to the needs of a city, as a
park, or boulevard, or promenade, directly on a water-front, especially
if that water is sea-water,--if it is brought in and carried out by two
daily tides. What more beautiful, what more wholesome, what more
invigorating, during the hot season of the year, than to have an open
boulevard, where you can sit, or walk, or ride,--a place for the fresh
sea-water of the ocean brought in pure to you every day! Well, they mean
to preserve that, and give us about two hundred feet for a driveway, a
saddle-horse way (a saddle-pad, I think they call it), and footpath, a
place for flowers and trees, as it extends along the water-side,
beginning by Leverett Street, and going out as far as Brighton. Then
from there they mean to take this great Back Bay, which Dr. CLARKE
properly called a natural cesspool, and keep a large part of it under
water, the ocean to be let in and let out at our option, so that it can
be always kept pure; and yet such a quantity of it, that it will be a
sort of inland sea, where we can have regattas, and where every
gentleman may keep his boat, and every boy may keep his scull; and
perhaps it is just as well a boy's skull should be there as anywhere
else a lar