f it loses the two first of these distinctions, how long will
it retain the last? Business and population will turn away from an
unhealthy and unattractive town. Defective sewerage and imperfect
drainage are sapping the health; and the occupation of the suburbs by
houses, manufactories, workshops, and stores, is destroying the beauty
of the city. Will the merchants of Boston, whose reputation for
intelligence, sagacity, and enterprise has gone out to the ends of the
world, permit a false economy to blind them to the importance of this
whole matter?

Of the details of the financial question, I am not qualified to speak;
but I will venture a single remark. It seems only a piece of common
sense to one unfamiliar with the intricate problems of finance to say,
that, if the present time is one of great depression of values, it is
precisely the time when a wealthy corporation like the city of Boston
can purchase the land for a park at the lowest price, and therefore
should do it.

Permit me to add a single word with regard to the plan proposed by the
Commissioners. It offers more advantages, and fewer disadvantages, than
any other that has been proposed. This might be expected, when we
reflect that it was prepared in accordance with the advice of Mr.
OLMSTEAD, than whom no one is better qualified to advise in such
matters. It may be safely asserted, that if Boston should accept this
plan, and authorize it to be carried out, the city would possess a park
unique in its character, of unrivalled beauty, and one which all our
citizens, young and old, rich and poor, would greatly enjoy, and of
which, if they once obtained it, they would never be bribed to
dispossess themselves.

The Rev. Dr. ELLIS, in his recent eloquent address at the centennial
anniversary of the evacuation of Boston, used the following language,
"As I read the history of our fathers in all their generations, their
toil and virtue seem to me to have been the noblest, in their steady
regard for the welfare and happiness of their posterity. And as I firmly
believe that no single individual can follow the highest pattern of an
earthly life, unless his hope and faith link on to a future, so I find
it proved in all biographies and annals, that all unselfish, noble, and
heroic lives are those which parents lead for their children and their
children's children. We have such lives among us in city, state, and
nation, private and public, high and humble." May we be true