to a moderate rate, could be made generally understood, fast driving became very rare,—­more so, probably, than in Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne.  As far as possible, an arrest has been made in every case of intentionally fast driving observed by the keepers:  those arrested number less than one to ten thousand of the vehicles entering the Park for pleasure-driving.  In each case a fine (usually three dollars) has been imposed by the magistrate.

In six months there have been sixty-four arrests for all sorts of “disorderly conduct,” including walking on the grass after being requested to quit it, quarrelling, firing crackers, etc.,—­one in eighteen thousand visitors.  So thoroughly established is the good conduct of people on the Park, that many ladies walk daily in the Ramble without attendance.

A protest, as already intimated, is occasionally made against the completeness of detail to which the Commissioners are disposed to carry their work, on the ground that the habits of the masses of our city-population are ill-calculated for its appreciation, and that loss and damage to expensive work must often be the result.  To which we would answer, that, if the authorities of the city hitherto have so far misapprehended or neglected their duty as to allow a large industrious population to continue so long without the opportunity for public recreations that it has grown up ignorant of the rights and duties appertaining to the general use of a well-kept pleasure-ground, any losses of the kind apprehended, which may in consequence occur, should be cheerfully borne as a necessary part of the responsibility of a good government.  Experience thus far, however, does not justify these apprehensions.

To collect exact evidence showing that the Park is already exercising a good influence upon the character of the people is not in the nature of the case practicable.  It has been observed that rude, noisy fellows, after entering the more advanced or finished parts of the Park, become hushed, moderate, and careful.  Observing the generally tranquil and pleased expression, and the quiet, sauntering movement, the frequent exclamations of pleasure in the general view or in the sight of some special object of natural beauty, on the part of the crowds of idlers in the Ramble on a Sunday afternoon, and recollecting the totally opposite character of feeling, thought, purpose, and sentiment which is expressed by a crowd assembled anywhere else, especially in the public streets of the city, the conviction cannot well be avoided that the Park already exercises a beneficent influence of no inconsiderable value, and of a kind which could have been gained in no other way.  We speak of Sunday afternoons and of a crowd; but the Park evidently does induce many a poor family, and many a poor seamstress and journeyman, to take a day or a half-day from the working-time of the week, to the end of retaining their youth and their youthful relations with purer Nature, and to their gain in