Regard to the convenience, comfort, and safety of those who cannot afford to visit the Park in carriages has led to an unusual extent and variety of character in the walks, and also to a peculiar arrangement by which they are carried in many instances beneath and across the line of the carriage-roads.  Thus access can be had by pedestrians to all parts of the Park at times when the roads are thronged with vehicles, without any delays or dangers in crossing the roads, and without the humiliation to sensitive democrats of being spattered or dusted, or looked down upon from luxurious equipages.

The great irregularity of the surface offers facilities for this purpose,—­the walks being carried through the heads of valleys which are crossed by the carriage-ways upon arches of masonry.  Now with regard to these archways, if no purposes of convenience were to be served by them, the Park would not, we may admit, be beautified by them.  But we assume that the population of New York is to be doubled; that, when it is so, if not sooner, the walks and drives of the Park will often be densely thronged; and, for the comfort of the people, when that shall be the case, we consider that these archways will be absolutely necessary.[A] Assuming further, then, that they are to be built, and, if ever, built now,—­since it would involve an entirely new-modelling of the Park to introduce them in the future,—­it was necessary to pay some attention to make them agreeable and unmonotonous objects, or the general impression of ease, freedom, and variety would be interfered with very materially.  It is not to make the Park architectural, as is commonly supposed, that various and somewhat expensive design is introduced; on the contrary, it is the intention to plant closely in the vicinity of all the arches, so that they may be unnoticed in the general effect, and be seen only just at the time they are being used, when, of course, they must come under notice.  The charge is made, that the features of the natural landscape have been disregarded in the plan.  To which we answer, that on the ground of the Lower Park there was originally no landscape, in the artistic sense.  There were hills, and hillocks, and rocks, and swampy valleys.  It would have been easy to flood the swamps into ponds, to clothe the hillocks with grass and the hills with foliage, and leave the rocks each unscathed in its picturesqueness.  And this would have been a great improvement; yet there would be no landscape:  there would be an unassociated succession of objects,—­many nice “bits” of scenery, appropriate to a villa-garden or to an artist’s sketch-book, but no scenery such as an artist arranges for his broad canvas, no composition, no park-like prospect.  It would have afforded a good place for loitering; but if this were all that was desirable, forty acres would have done as well as a thousand, as is shown in the Ramble.  Space, breadth, objects in the distance, clear in outline, but obscure, mysterious, exciting curiosity, in their detail, were wanting.