I should say that the imitation was quite within the bounds of good taste. The bad taste is in the wish to imitate Europe at all; but with the abundance of money, the imitation is simply inevitable. There is no American life for wealth; there is no native formula for the expression of social superiority; because America means equality if it means anything, in the last analysis. But in all this show on the Park driveways, you get no effect so vivid as the effect of sterility in that liberty without equality which seems to satisfy us Americans. A man may come into the Park with any sort of vehicle, so that it is not for the carriage of merchandise, and he is free to spoil what might be a fine effect with the intrusion of whatever squalor of turnout he will. He has as much right there as any one, but the right to be shabby in the presence of people who are fine is not one that I should envy him. I do not think that he can be comfortable in it, for the superiority around him puts him to shame, as it puts the poor man to shame at every turn in life, though some people, with an impudence that is pitiable, will tell you that it does not put him to shame; that he feels himself as good as any one. We are always talking about human nature and what it is, and what it is not; but we try in our blind worship of inequality to refuse the first and simplest knowledge of human nature, which testifies of itself in every throb of our own hearts, as we try even to refuse a knowledge of the Divine nature, and attribute to the Father of all a design in the injustice we have ourselves created. To me the lesson of Central Park is that where it is used in the spirit of fraternity and equality, the pleasure in it is pure and fine, and that its frequenters have for the moment a hint of the beauty which might be perpetually in their lives; but where it is invaded by the motives of the strife that raves all round it in the city outside, its joys are fouled with contempt and envy, the worst passions that tear the human heart. Ninety-nine Americans out of a hundred, have never seen a man in livery; they have never dreamed of such a display as this in the Park. Yet with our conditions, I fear that at sight of it ninety-nine Americans out of every hundred would lust for their turn of the wheel, their throw of the dice, so that they might succeed to a place in it, and flaunt their luxury in the face of poverty, and abash humility with their pride. NEW YORK STREETS.